Zain Youssef
Photography: Mahmoud Raouf
On the grounds of the Iraq International Book Fair and within the seminar platform, a dialogue seminar was held to talk about the company’s support for cultural, artistic and social activities, in which Saman Bojan, General Manager of the Central Region of Asiacell Company, spoke and the session was moderated by journalist Yasser Al-Salem.
The seminar came to talk about the vision of Asiacell in supporting cultural, artistic and social activities, where Bogan spoke saying, “As for the issue of social care for Asiacell, it is not a coincidence, social care is one of the basic things in the company’s constitution, we care about all things that concern society and this comes from being the first Iraqi telecommunications company interested in all matters related to society and also comes mainly from the support of the Chairman of the Board of Directors and founder of the company, Mr. Farouk Mustafa, and his emphasis on us as cadres by giving this care and support,” he said.
On how to choose the events supported by the company, he said, “We in the subject of social care have an action plan, for example this year we want to focus on a specific area, but during the year we receive some requests that we see as appropriate and give value to the community, so we support them, we have a strategic plan for the company that carries out several programs and several sponsorships and also anything that comes during the year we determine if there is value for these projects and we support them.”
He added, “We set budgets, but often we exceed them, for example in the pandemic, we donated an amount of more than two billion dinars, so this number was not in our budget and we did not expect such a pandemic to come, but the pandemic happened and there was a need to support hospitals, so we donated a cash amount in order for the Ministry of Health and other supporting bodies to provide oxygen devices or any medical materials and other fogging and sterilization operations and the provision of medical materials, this matter was not within the budget. Or the annual plan, but Asiacell addressed that,” he said.
Talking about highlighting the company’s activities and the amounts it allocates to sponsor a particular matter, Bogan said that «the company provided many press releases, but the company’s main goal is the subject of the pandemic and we do not consider it a sports conference or any other event that can be highlighted, it is a humanitarian topic, and it was mentioned by some friends and some loyal, but our goal was not to focus on it in the media as much as our goal was to help society in such a circumstance».
Bojan stressed that «everyone knows that education last year was e-learning and I think that people today began to arrange their situation with e-learning, but without any request from any government agency, we directly provided support to all platforms of the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Education and allocated Kika Byte for students and also for people in their homes, this matter we had a big role in».
With regard to the return that the company is looking for through its sponsorship of the Iraq International Book Fair, Bojan said, “As I mentioned earlier, the subject of social welfare is something that exists in the constitution of our company, it is an unwritten constitution, but it has fundamentals, and one of its basics is to support society and support culture, we are the official sponsor of the Mirbad Poetry Festival for 16 years and it is not something new to us, any book fair and anything related to culture we in our company’s policy are part of it, we first reflect a good image about Iraq and cultural pioneers, and secondly, in order to be the reason for the success and continuation of such conferences.”
On the social aspect and the nature of the support provided by the company to entrepreneurial projects, Bojan stressed that «the support provided by the company is of two types, material support and moral support by benefiting from our cadres», adding that «the company has Iraqi cadres consisting of three thousand employees of the finest Iraqi cadres, which manages all the work of the company, and with the experience they gained from working in Asiacell, we try to transfer it to young people to benefit from it in their work, when a young man has a specific project, we support him financially and try To develop it, some of the businesses we supported have succeeded and become profitable businesses that do not need support,” he said. He stated that «all the company’s partners are successful models, all of them, whether they are civil society organizations or the media, are all capable partners and specialists in their work», concluding his speech, saying, «I think and as a personal impression, I did not expect that there will be a demand for the book, considering the new generation is the generation of electronic games and does not like the book in its traditional way, and I expected that when I arrive at the exhibition I see the elderly only, but I found young people present greatly and have a great interest in books and this indicates The existing products and books are something elegant and good and also indicate the good organization by the Mada Foundation, the Arab novelist Taha Hussein said Egypt writes, Lebanon prints and Iraq reads, I think he was very right in his speech.”