The HillCity Foundation celebrated its 20th anniversary in Lagos with the theme ‘Beyond Impact.’
The foundation has awarded over 2,500 university scholarships to students in more than170 Nigerian universities and Uganda. It intends to expand to ten African countries by the time it reaches 25.
In his keynote address, the founder, Engineer Obi Imemba, highlighted that the foundation is what it is now as a result of 20 years of intentional decision-making.
He said: “HillCity was born out of the need to solve the challenges in our society. There are young people out of school; nobody to show them direction. Few of us came together to form HillCity and the goal is to discover, develop and direct them to the right direction. And we do this through education and our support in sponsoring their university programme. We also sponsor them in economic empowerment programme, – startup businesses and also give them mentorship.
“There is a fourth programme we call Self Discovery Programme. With these four programme we call the ‘4 axis of impact’, we are able to develop the total being. We have been doing this for 20 years consistently and we have received a lot of support from members that partnered with us. We have not received anything from government and we do not intend to do that.
“We are here to provide social support to the society and not to draw from government. And the next level for us is that we want to change the narrative in Africa. We want to harness, package and convert into wealth creation on a sustainable basis, the abundant energy in young people in Africa.”
The event, hosted by Omoba and Carol Braide, saw the induction of three new graduates who were mentees to mentors. Andrew Rugasira of Uganda and Dr. Valentine Obi were given Special Recognition awards, while William Sunday received the Personality award.