First Bank Raises Hope for Needy, Launches SPARK

First Bank of Nigeria has restated its commitment to societal growth through ‘SPARK’ to promote acts of kindness.

According to the company, SPARK which means Start Promoting Acts of Random Kindness was announced in 2017 and aimed to restore the fading age-long culture of being one another’s brother’s keeper.

Shedding more light on the idea, First Bank’s Group Head of Marketing and Corporate Communications, Mrs. Folake Ani-Mumuney, noted that SPARK as an empowerment programme, offered both staff of the bank and external stakeholders, a platform to support humanitarian causes through crowdfunding by enabling and encouraging them to make small contributions/donations in aid of members of society in critical needs.

She stated that the framework of the programme is a three-year approach which started last year during the Bank’s Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability Week (CR&S), adding that employees were encouraged to participate by nominating those they thought were deserving of acts of random kindness.

“We are pleased to announce that 10 beneficiaries have emerged from over 100 nominations based on the criteria of community/individual’s emotive story and the significance of the individual/community need.

“The beneficiaries include Baby Ijeoma, who was in dire need of cardiac surgery to correct her congenital heart disease and forestall irreversible and life-threatening complications, got over N1.5 million assistance.

Also, Mrs. Mary Pius, a widow with five children and fruits seller who was unable to send her children to school, received N100,000 and this gave her business some boost.

Others are Lawal Seun, a boy and the third child of a blind woman in Ondo town whose husband abandoned with the four children, Seun is now able to pay his school fees in his secondary school due to the N150,000 SPARK offer,” she explained.