Tigo and Reach for Change award $75,000 each to three winners of the Reach for Change Social E

Nov. 29, 2012 - PRLog -- Tigo has selected three social entrepreneurs as winners of $75,000 US, as salary support under the ‘Tigo Reach for Change’ initiative that was launched in September this year.
The Tigo Reach for Change new Social Entrepreneurs for 2012 are Brenda-Deborah Shuma, Nyabange Chirimi, and Thadei Msumanje. The initiatives that they will be implementing will focus on empowering disabled children & youth with vocational skills, mobile classes for street children, improving learning through ICT respectively.

In September this year, Tigo in partnership with Non-profit organization Reach for Change launched for the first time in Tanzania an initiative that aims at identifying and supporting social entrepreneurs with solid ideas on how to improve the lives of children.

After a one -month campaign calling out all Tanzanians with innovative ideas to apply, we received a staggering 2480 applications; 15 strong applicants made it to the finals following an extensive filtering process that involved Tigo & Reach for Change staff, as well as external experts. These semi-finalists pitched their ideas to a panel that faced the extreme hard task of choosing 3 winners.

“Corporate Social Responsibility is one of the pillars of our organization and we are particularly keen on this initiative, which is part of a global program. Tigo Tanzania has attracted extremely strong proposals in a highly competitive process. The top three who were selected today not only won the judges hearts but also impressed them with the soundness and potential of their projects. They’ll now receive salary funding of $25,000 a year for up to three years in order to focus and fulfill their objectives,” said Tigo Acting General Manager, Andrew Hodgson.

The ‘Tigo Reach for Change’ partnership focuses on identifying and supporting local social entrepreneurs with solid ideas on improving the lives of Tanzanian children. The three awardees will now join a three-year incubator programme where they get support to transform their ideas into sustainable ventures. In addition to this, they will receive salary funding of USD 25,000 a year for up to three years, as well as mentoring and professional advice from senior employees of Tigo.

Reach for Change is a non-profit organization established in Sweden and co-founded by Kinnevik, the founding company of Millicom. The search for social entrepreneurs first began in Sweden in 2010, followed by Russia in 2011, before embarking in that same year as a pilot project for Africa in Ghana. Ghana has recently reported an improvement in the livelihoods of over 140,000 children.

Tigo and Reach for Change officially begun the search for social entrepreneurs across all Tigo’s African operations in August of this year with its first launch in Rwanda, followed by Tanzania, then Congo DRC , Ghana,  Chad and finally Senegal in the week to come.

About Tigo

Tigo started operations in 1994 as the first cellular network in Tanzania. It now covers 26 regions in mainland Tanzania and Zanzibar.  Tigo strives to be Tanzania’s most innovative mobile phone operator, offering services ranging from affordable mobile voice communications to high speed Internet access and mobile financial services through Tigo Pesa.

Tigo is part of Millicom International Cellular S.A (MIC) which provides affordable, widely accessible and readily available cellular telephony services to more than 43 million customers in 13 emerging markets in Africa and Latin America.

About Reach for Change

Reach for Change is a non-profit organization established in Sweden and co-founded by Kinnevik, the founding company of Millicom. The vision of Reach for Change is to mobilize a global movement of smart, brave and passionate change agents, building a better world for children. Reach for Change identifies and supports social entrepreneurs in Europe, Africa and Asia. Website: www.reachforchange.org.

For further information visit:  www.tigo.co.tz

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