As part of Vision 2016 awareness month activities for this year, the Botswana Housing Corporation (BHC) last Tuesday joined other corporate entities in the country by contributing fifty-one duvet inners, fifty-one bed covers, six single beds and some bed-clothes to the Motswedi Rehabilitation Centre, a Dutch Reformed charitable school for handicapped pupils in Mochudi.
Speaking at the occasion to mark the handover, the Chief Executive Officer of the corporation, Reginald Motswaiso, told the audience that BHC had since formulated a corporate social responsibility policy that was triggered and motivated by the board, management and staff.
The policy, he said, aimed at up-lifting the less fortunate of the society through contributions to charitable organizations and activities.
“Today’s gesture is part of our efforts in up-lifting the less fortunate of our society,” said Motswaiso. “This donation is in line with the ideals of our national Vision 2016, particularly the pillar of building a compassionate, just and caring nation.”
Motswaiso informed the audience that BHC had agreed on a comprehensive corporate social responsibility that would see his corporation spreading wings around the country until the end of the financial year in March 2007.
He said BHC was not only attracted by the Centre’s dedication to help those with physical and mental disabilities but also by the fact that the Centre indiscriminately catered for children from all over the country and not just Kgatleng area children. This, he said, attracted the corporation.
Motswaiso assured the audience that BHC would continue providing similar assistance to benefit all Batswana in one way or another.
Receiving the donation, Grace Ramatsui, the founder of the centre, thanked BHC for the gesture and stated that the donation would go a long way in assisting the children.
She took the audience down memory lane and recited historic tales of missionaries who arrived in the country sometime in 1887.
“Those missioneries were driven by a vision of compassion and love,” she said. “And, as a result, the Botswana government is on the right track with vision 2016 ideals.
“Vision of compassion and love have long been with us, having been brought by the missionaries in 1887. They built religious schools to empower Batswana.
Botswana government has thus struck the right cord with vision 2016 ideals”.
Ramatsui further told the audience that Motswedi Rehabilitation Centre is a charitable school aimed at poverty alleviation and self-reliance. She said it all started way back in 1988 although the project was officially opened in 1993.
“We teach our children courses like carpentry and horticulture so that they could be self reliant and be able to fend for themselves in an open market,” she said.
Ramatsui told the audience that, with the little they got from the sales of carpentry work and vegetables, the pupils had managed to open accounts with the post office.
Kgosi Phulane and Rakwadi Modipane, the Member of Parliament for Kgatleng West, attended the ceremony.
