Sustainable banking, development and CSR strategy

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), one of the positive outcomes of a sound corporate governance, is one of the ways of impacting positively on many lives and communities.Indeed, as businesses act responsively and boost their performance, they devote part of their income to giving back to the society by engaging in various life changing activities.
 
Unfortunately, for many reasons, some bothering on economy and outright lack of sheer will, some corporate entities have seen investments in CSR as only cost and waste, instead of ethical bonds that would open up more growth opportunities.
 
Similarly, poverty alleviation should not just be a mere declaration, but deliberate and strategic use of education, economic development, health and income redistribution to improve the livelihoods of the world’s poorest people by governments and organisations.

The bank’s CSR philosophy, as far as economic empowerment is concerned, is focused on helping to create an enabling environment for empowerment of individuals, businesses and the nation at large through micro-entrepreneurship, microcredit and skills acquisition. 
 
In 2016, the bank extended its support to internally displaced women in Maiduguri, Bornu State, providing training and financial support to 100 of them to start any business of their choice. It also organised various capacity building programmes for the beneficiaries. 
 
Bornu State Commissioner for Poverty Alleviation, Hajia Inna Galadima, attested to the gestures when she commended the financial institution for ‘’making a difference in the lives of the internally displaced women’’.

So far, more than 100,000 people across the country have benefited from the project in eight years. There is 500 eye surgeries in Kebbi, Cross River and Imo states, while more than a thousand others underwent the screening for cataract, as the bank has previously carried out the programme in Katsina, Adamawa and Ogun states.
 
Jonathan Nwosu, aged 78, from Umuaro community in Nkwere Local Government of Imo State, is a beneficiary. A former commercial vehicle driver who plied Port-Harcourt-Aba route until his sight challenge in 2016, described the project as a service to humanity.
 
“I cannot, but sincerely appreciate FCMB for what I consider as service to humanity. I do not have anything to give to show appreciation, but to pray for the management and staff of the Bank. I did not know a thing like this could fall by my feet just like that without anybody asking me to pay anything. I feel like somebody who came first in a college examination,” Nwosu said.
 
The poverty alleviation activities of FCMB have also been extended to the Federal Nigeria Society for the Blind (FNSB), as it recently donated 15 Braille machines (comparable to a typewriter) to the Vocational Training Centre (VCT) located at Oshodi, Lagos state.  
 
The gesture is aimed at effectively supporting the efforts of the 60 years FNSB towards enhancing the standard of teaching, as well as learning of the blind, who are students of the training centre. So far, over 2,000 visually impaired men and women have benefitted from the various training programmes.
 
The bank’s intervention to eradicate Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) – a group of 17 parasitic and bacterial infections that affect over one billion poorest people globally, in partnership with Sight Savers, an international NGO, covers four severely affected states- Kebbi, Kogi, Kwara and Sokoto.
 
This involves a mass drug distribution approach by an extensive network of volunteer community drug distributors. The bank’s intervention has gone a long way to combat the impact of the diseases.
 
The commitment towards environmental protection and sustainability remains a core pillar of the CSR focus of the financial institution. Indeed, it places great emphasis on not just what it achieves as an organisation, but how it achieves it.
 
A highpoint of the FCMB’s environmental sustainability activities is its ability to identify and innovatively devise means of converting challenges posed to opportunities.
 
The sponsorship of a project that relates to the conversion of water hyacinths to valuable materials in partnership with another NGO, Mitimeth International, since 2015 is a testimony.
 
Under this programme, so far executed at Bayeku community in Ikorodu and Epe, has hundreds of people already trained on how to make handicrafts, such as baskets, lamps, dressing accessories, mugs, vases, table mats and so on, for commercial purposes from invasive aquatic materials. 

With the new skills learnt, women and youths of Bayeku community in Ikorodu Epe and adjoining communities have been empowered to turn an environmental menace into a source of income; courtesy of FCMB’s CSR intervention.