Giving Back: Community Build Day in Gbagada

Twenty volunteers from across the business, drawn from site, the workshop and the office, spent a Saturday repairing a community block a short walk from our head office on Residence Road. The building houses a primary health centre and a small library, and years of deferred maintenance had left both in poor shape.

The day's work was unglamorous and exactly what the building needed: a leaking roof section stripped and re-sheeted, damaged plasterwork cut out and made good, drainage cleared along the frontage, and a coat of paint inside and out. Nothing here required a crane or a contract; it required people who already know how to do it showing up with tools.

We are a Gbagada business before we are anything else. Projects in Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt keep the lights on, but this is the neighbourhood, and a Saturday a few times a year is a small return on what it gives us.