For its six-year anniversary celebration on Friday last week, Radisson Blu Hotel & Convention Centre chose to share breakfast with workers at M&M Plaza located in Gishushu.

At 10am, the building was buzzing with movement of excited workers who all received a breakfast package of diverse snacks including cupcakes, apples, yoghurt, to mention a few, and a small gift box that contained a wine opener.

The team from Radisson organised a big table next to the entrance, where all breakfast boxes were placed, which eased the serving process.

According to Desire Mutangana, the senior corporate sales manager, the hotel chose to celebrate with others to extend their gratitude and show appreciation for their support for all the years in existence.

"We planned for this gesture but it is also part of our values and standards. We usually appreciate our esteemed customers in different ways, like bookers cocktail reception, which brings together all our prospective clients at our premises, giveaways that involve cakes, wines delivered to their offices, and the Radisson rewards programme that offers them a collection of exceptional benefits, services and privileges at our hotel,” he says.

Mutangana says that this will be a biannual exercise, however, it will be in different buildings in the form of ‘Umuganura’ (National Harvest Day).

"We served 350 clients at the Career Center building, 150 at PCD (the new BPR) building and 350 from M&M Plaza which makes it 850 in total. Giving back is an act of generosity and kindness and it is recommended to recognise clients’ efforts,” he adds.

Mutangana says that the clients were excited and felt appreciated, which is important.

Most companies or corporations in Rwanda usually celebrate with their customers and the public, and give back free services or products. It can be termed as corporate social responsibility—it is a way of describing how companies measure and control their impact on society.

This has become a habit for most corporations that make money from the public, for instance, local banks have assisted deprived citizens pay for health insurance, among other things.

Telecom companies like MTN, Airtel and others have introduced promotions where winners walk away with prizes such as smartphones, travel tickets, and gifts like cars and bicycles or unlimited data for a specific period. The same applies to tourism companies as they offer free tourism packages to their customers. Other companies have offered solar energy to people in rural areas, and changed their lives completely.

Experts say that giving back to the community is a great way of growing your local brand awareness, reputation and possibly even driving sales, particularly for companies that rely on local business.

Other ways a company can give back to the community is by volunteering their time for community projects, provide mentorship to local aspiring business owners, use their skills or expertise to provide free local workshops, host local charity events at their business premises for free, donate wasted or unsold goods to charity, and introduce an employee donation scheme, where staff can donate directly from their salary or work with local schools to offer work experience and internships.

"Giving back to the community by a company is not only humane, but a responsibility that companies owe the communities they operate in. Giving back builds the image and security of the company by community members and gives its employees a reason to provide great results. Giving back also builds a business’s backbone for top talent attraction, great professional networks and cements relationships with the community,” says Mutesi Gasana, CEO Ubuntu Publishers Ltd and Arise Education Rwanda Ltd.