World Vision Ghana (WVG) has been adjudged the Best CSR NGO in Ghana and given the CSR award for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Partnership on the Unlock Literacy Programme, by the Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility & Sustainability (CSR) West Africa.
The Centre for CSR West Africa’s annual awards event is a joint collaboration between the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI, Ghana Chamber of Commerce, corporate organisations, JICA and some key government ministries including the Ministry for Energy) to recognise reputable organisations making significant contributions to attaining the SDGs.
According to the organisers, close to 100 companies submitted entries for the award, and World Vision’s entries emerged among the outstanding organisations.
World Vision Ghana was awarded CSR NGO of the Year, for implementing Livelihood Improvement and Family Empowerment (LIFE) programmes that birthed 290 new savings for transformation groups comprising 4,293 females and 1,840 males, and caring for 15,394 children.
And for implementing Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) programmes benefitting 85,200 people in 77 communities which have been cited for open defecation, plus 56,492 people who gained access to improved household sanitation facilities.
The award was also in recognition of WVG’s implementation of Health, Environment and Wellness (HEAL) to increase the protection of 1 million most-vulnerable girls and boys; the Reading Improvement and Skills Enhancement (RISE) technical programme and other projects.
The CSR award for SDG partnership was in recognition of WVG’s Unlock Literacy project, as a contribution to the voluntary national review of Sustainable Development Goals in Ghana, via the Ghana CSOs’ platform on SGDs.
The model subscribes to an early-exit bilingual literacy approach, which believes children learn to read faster and better when they start learning to read in their mother language. The reading skills acquired in their mother language help children to learn a second language faster.
The Unlock Literacy project model also empowers children at the early grade level with reading competencies, needed for critical thinking on local issues and taking sustainable actions on community issues.
Within the last three years, the Unlock Literacy project has reached 32,000 children at 217 schools in 180 communities of the country.
The project is reaching 1,650 teachers and 780 community volunteers who are supporting 305 after-school reading clubs. So far, 254,000 copies of 250 titles of supplementary readers have been printed and distributed to 271 community book banks.
The Board Chair, Baafour Otu-Boateng, and Vice, Dr. Mary Amoako-Coleman, received the awards on behalf of WVG. The Board Chair gave a captivating speech that revolved around WVG’s offerings to donors on ‘3Ts’ – Trust, Technical Capacity and Track Record – in line with the local resource mobilisation drive.
The Ghana CSR Excellence Awards (GHANACEA) recognised the WVG programmes’ impact on lives, livelihoods, education, water, sanitation and hygiene, and contributions to national development.
Previously, World Vision Ghana was recognised by the Ghanaian government for its immense contributions in the fight against COVID-19 at the 2023 National Awards Ceremony.
In 2021, World Vision Ghana won the UNESCO-Japan Prize on Education for Sustainable Development award through its ‘Unlock Literacy Project’ – which promotes a holistic approach to the development of literacy focusing on critical-thinking, a core competency for sustainability; and the Millennium Excellence award for Urban and Rural Development organised by the Millennium Excellence Foundation (MEF).
In addition, World Vision Ghana won the ‘Best HR Management in the NGO Sector’ award for the second year running at the 2021 and 2023 awards.
It also won the ‘Most Outstanding Non-Profit Organisation Response to COVID-19’ award and was a finalist in the category of ‘Best Organisation in HR Information Systems’, having previously won this in 2019.
