A statement issued in Accra by Mrs Cynthia Lumor, the Corporate Services Executive, MTN said MTN’s Heroes of Change CSR programme won the Best Community Relations Programme of the Year.

It said the company’s Senior Manager for its Corporate Communications Department, Georgina Asare Fiagbenu, was adjudged PR Discovery of the Year. Mrs Lumor commenting on the awards, said: “MTN is very excited to receive these awards, which reinforce the company’s interest in implementing creative ways of communicating with its stakeholders.”

She said, “MTN Ghana considers Communications and Public Relations very critical to its business growth and sustainability. This is why the company continues to implement strategies that will enable it build goodwill amongst all of its stakeholders.”

She said MTN was a successful African story and it would continue to grow through the implementation of consistent, strategic and creative Public Relations and other initiatives. “MTN won the highly coveted PR Organisation of the Year award, based on the effective and well-executed PR strategy used to communicate the Mobile Money service during the Mobile Money month,” she added.

The campaign successfully rekindled interest in the Mobile Money service by projecting MTN Mobile Money as the most convenient way of transferring money. Currently, the subscriber base has grown to approximately 7.8 million registered customers, with more than 48,000 Mobile Money agents performing more than 40 million transactions monthly across the country.

She said the Heroes of Change programme was also awarded for its ability to unearth, celebrate and support people, who have brightened lives and improve livelihood in their communities.

She said: “With the MTN Heroes of Change programme, MTN manifests its commitment to the socio-economic development of Ghana by helping improve the quality of lives through sustainable social interventions in the areas of health, education and economic empowerment.”

The programme, has won several awards, including the CSR Project of the year 2014 awarded by the Head of State Award Scheme. On the PR Discovery of the Year award, Mrs Lumor said: “In many ways this award is a reflection of the quality of human resource we have at MTN and the invaluable support we continue to receive from our stakeholders as we strive to build and maintain a reputation for MTN.”

The IPR Excellence Awards aims at honoring and generating public recognition for the achievements and positive contributions of Public Relations units to their organisations.  It was also instituted to promote professionalism in the practice of PR in Ghana.