Twellium Foundation officially launched

We write to formally inform you about the launch of the Twellium Foundation. The Twellium Foundation was founded in October 2016 by Mr. Houssein Kesserwani and Mr. Hassan Kesserwani renowned businessmen, entrepreneurs and philanthropists as an informal NGO to help support and empower disadvantage groups.

It was officially launched on 25th January, 2017. To keep true to its mission, the Twellium Foundation shall be committed to doing a number of things from its inception by offering corporate social responsibility and corporate social impact investments in the areas of education through the offer of scholarship to needy students, equip people with anger management skills in order to curb violence; provision of branded teaching and learning materials to schools and provision of skills training to the youth as well as micro capital to rural women in Ghana.

The active instrumentality of functional Board of Directors and Management Team is the driving force behind the Foundation. Good corporate governance will be strictly observed to drive the attainment of the needed results, outcomes and impact in our society.

Projects and initiatives shall be designed along the cardinal pillars of efficiency, effectiveness, and overall social impact that have kept the philanthropic nature of the founder alive for the past few years.

This concept note is intended to shed more light on the vision, mission and what the Twellium Foundation seeks to do.

1.1 Vision

To be the leader in social impact projects that directly touches the lives of the disadvantaged

1.2 Mission

To mobilize the necessary human and financial resource to inspire, empower and support disadvantaged communities.

1.3 Slogan

The slogan of the Twellium Foundation is “Impacting Lives”. This slogan purposefully reflects empathy, compassion, our humanity and the need for supporting people to realize their God-given potential.

1.4 Rationale for establishment

It appears that the need to establish the Twellium Foundation cannot be over emphasis due to the obvious philanthropic works by its founder. The founder has been able to do a number of impactful things in the past even with its current shape – lack of organizational structure and project interventions.

It stands to reason then, that if what he does is well-structured, it will be in the position to make much greater impact in the not-too-distant future. Again, it’s important however to underscore that a Foundation holds tremendous potential to harness more resources in order to expand impact.

Meaning the Foundation will have an effective structure with an effective team who will have the capacity to design and execute programs and projects which have large scale impact on the lives of many people. Certainly, this will be the best way to keep and build upon the legacy of the founder in touching lives positively.

Additionally, there is a significant gap that the Foundation can fill and become very relevant to discourse on children and women empowerment within a short period of time. There is not much research dedicated purposely to women’s issues especially in the rural communities.

Finally, the sustainability of the Foundation or any organization for that matter depends on its ability to maintain an institutional life. This is only possible when there is a well-structured system with interdependent parts working together to achieve a common a goal.

1.4 Operational (thematic) focus

One of the important areas for establishing of the Twellium Foundation is the operational focus of the organization. One very specific and easy way to identify the operational focus of this organization is to go back into the life of the Founder and understand the things about which he is passionate.

This will be a clear indicator of how things should be done in the organization and which project interventions should have priority over the others. Following this therefore, the operational focus of the Foundation should be the empowerment of disadvantaged groups. The following are specific thematic areas for Twellium Foundation:

1.5.1. a. Livelihood support: this is geared towards reducing poverty by helping the poor in their economic activities. Money-making, trade and livelihood are some of the issues they are concern with. We will empower them through start-up capitals, business growth and financial literacy training, soft loans/grants, formation of cooperative groups etc to enable them attain a livelihood for themselves and their families.

1.5.2. b. Women and Children Empowerment: Women and Children generally do not have the same advantages as men in most societies. Indeed, they are most often disadvantaged in many ways including being denied education. But in addition to these, they are handicapped physically whilst others’ social circumstances make them vulnerable in society; these may include but not limited to women in unfavorable labour, prostitutes, head potters (Kayayie) etc. Programs can be designed to help such people catch up with life’s opportunities.

1.5.3 Education and Skills Training Support: one of the surest ways to level the playfield for males and females is to get both groups educated formally or informal. In one vein, this could focus on supporting them to enroll into and finish school. In another vein, this could be a functional literacy approach where out-of-school illiterate women will be trained in every-day literacy usage. They may also be taught vocational skills which they can use to earn income for themselves and their families.

1.5.4 Health and Sanitation: The health of every citizen is the wealth of the nation. Access to clean water is one of the major issues facing our deprived society whiles sanitation is a general societal problem. Twellium Foundation shall undertake projects that will provide clean water to the deprived communities and help sanitize our society. The foundation will undertake Malaria and HIV/AIDS prevention and education projects as well as hygiene interventions that are required in our society.

The above are a few of the notable sub-areas. It is to be noted however that these sub-areas intermix in very significant ways. Depending on the strategy of the Foundation, the focus could be on one specific area throughout or each specific area will be focused on for a specific period of time.

The first option will ensure that the Foundation maintains focus and specializes in one specific area to create a wealth of experience.

In this regard, all programs and projects may be geared towards a specific area of choose. On the other hand, if the Foundation chooses the second option, it will be required to determine which specific areas to focus on and within which period.

For instance, the foundation may develop programs on livelihood empowerment to run for five years with clear objectives and targets. After the five year period, new programs could be developed on female education or reproductive health.

In other words, the various sub-areas will be rotated as driven by specific needs that have to be met as well as availability of the needed resource capacity. This option will ensure that the Foundation takes a holistic approach to its thematic areas. The second option seems more reasonable.

1.5.6 Project interventions

The following are new ideas on the kind of projects that can be done once the structure is put in place. These are raw ideas that are only included here to show what the Foundation should be capable of doing. To make them work, better planning will have to be done on them, and it is to be noted that so many other projects that are not now immediately in mind could be implemented in the future.

An Anger Management skills training: The foundation will the equip people within the election hot spot communities with skills on how to control their temper and that of others. This is of outmost important in the last quarter of 2016 because our elections are general characterize by violence within some communities (Hot spot communities).

Business Development for Rural Women: The foundation will build a market centre in Accra to link rural women farmers to resources and opportunities to improve upon their agricultural productivity. They will conduct market research once every quarter and identify business opportunities to help rural women develop their agriculture businesses and link them to markets in Accra and off-takers in Accra. A database of women in agriculture will thus be created to champion this cause.

Training and Scholarship for Girls Prefects in the Poor Regions: a scheme to train and equip Girls School prefects on personal life mission statements, academic excellence, leadership, career guidance and counseling and basic life skills such as CV writing and job application skills. A select number of the Girls School Prefects will be given scholarship packages including casio calculators, maths sets, laptops, books and school fees.

Sexual health education for women: sensitization on best sexual health choices in rural communities employing the services of volunteers, especially on HIV/AIDS prevention.

Malaria Control Projects: Spraying of communities to prevent Malaria infection and distribution of mosquito nets for pregnant women.

We will be glad to work with you in future to make this initiative achieve its aim of impacting the lives of individuals and or communities in our society.

Thanks.

Yours faithfully,

Latif Abubakar

Project Consultant