Zimpapers Logo

Minister Simon Khaya Moyo

Abigail Mawonde Herald Correspondent
The Zimpapers Group recently scooped a top award in the category of Health Awareness Initiatives at the Harare Metropolitan Province’s Social Responsibility Awards.

Speaking during the awards, Minister of Energy and Power Development Simon Khaya Moyo, called on corporates to invest in the communities they operate in, saying without giving back, businesses would not be playing their part.

“We must give back,” he said. “We must always look around to see how we can invest in the community and in the environment.”

Minister Khaya Moyo hailed corporates investing and giving back to the community even during tough times, saying with such partnerships and relationships the country could only do better.

The award follows Zimpapers’ huge Cancer Awareness Campaign, which has seen the group partnering Island Hospice and Healthcare over the past few years — leading to increased coverage of issues to do with cancer and other health problems in the group’s publications and radio stations.

With health experts increasingly calling for early detection of cancer as the best way of saving lives, Zimpapers found it increasingly important for it to compliment Government by providing platforms through which information about living healthier lives could be disseminated to the public.

Zimpapers public relations and corporate affairs manager, Ms Beatrice Tonhodzayi said the recognition by Harare Metropolitan Province was quite humbling and would only spur the Group to do even more corporate social responsibility work in 2018.

She said all businesses that survived did so because of the support of the communities in which they served; hence social responsibility was something that all responsible businesses should do.

“We are humbled at this recognition, which has come due to our work with Island Hospice around cancer,” said Ms Tonhodzayi. “We will continue to run with this work because we believe awareness is key if we, as a people, are to get into a habit of going for early screening.

“The mantra with these cancers is ‘early detection saves lives’, so through our campaign, which we are so happy was embraced by many other corporates and individuals, including the Ministry of Health and Child Care, we spread that message through our multiple platforms.”

Ms Tonhodzayi said while cancer was the Group’s biggest corporate social responsibility initiative; Zimpapers also invested in education, health and several other initiatives in 2017. She highlighted that next year, the Group would be doing more in different areas, as it ploughed back to the communities that saw it grow over the years.

The Harare Metropolitan Social Responsibility Awards’ objective is to acknowledge good work being done by corporates and individuals within greater Harare.