TheCable

Qualifier for the 9th edition of the Daniel Ogechi Akujobi Memorial Foundation (DOAMF) Charity Golf Tournament has been scheduled for Saturday at the Golf Section of Ikoyi Club 1938, Lagos.

Participants at the qualifier will be hoping to pick a slot in the draw for the final of the event billed for the same venue on March 30.‎

Organisers say thousands of lives have been touched through the annual event that pulls golfers together to commit to charitable projects through the DOAMF platform.

Organising committee coordinator, Pat Basset, said that the foundation hopes to leverage the 2019 tournament to break new grounds in the number of beneficiaries to sustain the tradition of accountability to all stakeholders.

“The foundation reached out to more than 2,500 people from proceeds of the 2018 tournament, of which 14 were added to its full academic scholarship roll, totalling 26 beneficiaries on the scholarship support programme,” Basset said in Lagos on Wednesday.

“Last year, eight beneficiaries successfully graduated from universities and polytechnics. The scholarship recipients are in all tiers of education from primary through tertiary education and our goal this year is to increase the number.

“We are also very pleased to have committed volunteers come out yearly to serve,in addition to committing financial and material support and helping us meet and serve the less privileged. A number of them are corporate executives and business owners and we see this as evidence of strong identification with our objective of using the DOAM Foundation to improve the society.”

The funds generated through the charity golf events are channeled to support social causes in education, health and medical intervention for needy families and communities.

According to Bassey, some of the projects embarked on in 2018 include free medical treatments carried out for indigenes of Wera community, Ikorodu, Lagos state.

It was replicated outside Lagos for  residents of Alamala community, Abeokuta, Ogun state, and beneficiaries comprised children, youth, adults and senior citizens.

“We also held educational programmes for students of Randle Senior Secondary School, Apapa Senior Secondary School and United Christian Senior Secondary School in Lagos, where entrepreneurial and social skills as well as etiquette were taught in addition to donations that the schools received from the foundation,” he said.

“We measure progress in terms of value received by beneficiaries of the foundation’s initiatives. Our main goal is to reach as many families and communities as possible, even though we also need support.”

The DOAM Foundation is a charitable, humanitarian and non-governmental organisation established in 2007 in memory of 13-year-old Daniel Ogechi Akujobi who died in 2005 from injuries he sustained in an accident along the Lagos-Ibadan expressway, Ogun state, on his way to school.

He was the only son of his parents.

Over 79,000 lives have been impacted through the foundation’s programmes since its inception in 2007.