Major Corporations Accepting Social Responsibilities – A Welcoming Sign for Strong Partnership

Sunday, 20th December 2009

Monrovia, Liberia - From the onset of her presidency, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has been pushing for corporations to give back to communities where they work and invest. Over the years, local communities have reaped few benefits from these investments. However, a wind of change is now blowing across the land.

Private business entities are increasingly responding positively to the President’s insistence, requiring them to fulfill their social obligations to the communities in furtherance of the Government’s development agenda.

It started with Firestone, when the President, unsatisfied with the living conditions of workers at the plantation, insisted that the world’s rubber processing giant had an obligation to the people of Liberia, particularly those who labor to produce its raw material. She insisted that Firestone put in place mechanisms to improve their living standards, particularly in the areas of housing, education, and health.

Inpatient and anxious to settle for immediate cash benefits, workers of Firestone resisted the President’s approach which took into consideration the long-term benefits for workers rather than a one-shot deal, which would have left unresolved the fundamental problems Firestone workers have confronted over the years: low wages, the lack of modern adequate housing, poor educational facilities and inaccessibility to health care.

The company, acknowledging its shortcomings in these areas, has responded, and today the living conditions of workers at Firestone are much better than a few years ago. Just recently, the company turned over to Government a renovated structure which houses a Science Complex at the University of Liberia’s main campus.  The building, coincidentally, is named in honor of the company’s founder, Harvey S. Firestone.

Other private corporations and individuals have also responded to the President’s call for commitment to communities: the MacBain Foundation, Gorge Soros’s Open Society Initiative, the Liberia Education Trust, the Sirleaf Market Women Fund, Ambassador David Straz, and the Foundation for Women, to name just a few, are all supporting Liberia and buttressing the Government’s development programs.

“If there is any group we can say are Liberians, it is this group,” President Sirleaf said of the Lebanese Community, when she dedicated a project on Saturday, December 19th, in Mango Town, Lower Virginia, Montserrado County.  The World Lebanese Cultural Union spearheaded the renovation of a school for deaf and mute students in the area, with a promise to renovate an annex and install a water tank, according to the union’s president, Mr. Tony Hage. Another of its projects was the newly renovated and equipped technical and vocational center of the William V.S. Tubman High School in Monrovia.

The previous week, the President dedicated another home for the deaf and mute, in Bardnersville.  That project, funded by LISCRC, is part of the entity’s commitment to Lift Liberia. “We will demonstrate more commitment to social responsibility as a responsible corporate partner,” its Vice President, Joseph Kelleh, assured the Liberian leader who expressed her satisfaction about corporations responding to her call.

“This is exactly what we want to see, especially when it is being done this Christmas season,” the President noted.  Further driving home the principle of giving, the President appealed to the consciences of those who can to extend a helping hand to the unfortunate ones. “Just think about it; if every bottle of whisky you buy is spent on a bag of rice, you could feed about 100 children this Christmas.”

The spirit of giving was undoubtedly paramount on the President’s plate when she visited her ancestral towns of Korma and Julejuah, in Bomi County, sitting and chatting with family members and other community dwellers and sharing gifts among residents, including mothers and children.

The President takes Christmas on the road again this year, by spending the day in Belle Yellah, a town notorious for the political prison where past governments locked up dissidents. For the first time in the history of the nation, that town is being linked to the rest of the country by road. More than a Christmas gift, the opening of a motor road to Belle Yellah is a clear sign of changes that are reaching every corner of the Liberian nation under President Sirleaf’s leadership.

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