Welfare schemes, on one hand, provide crucial social safety nets by alleviating poverty, improving healthcare access, and offering financial assistance for housing, food, and childcare. These programmes reduce income inequality and foster economic stability by supporting vulnerable households, ensuring basic necessities, and promoting community well-being.
Welfare schemes help low-income individuals and families meet basic needs. The scheme offers services like Medicaid for medical care, prescription drugs, and long-term care for vulnerable populations. It supports affordable housing initiatives and provides assistance with energy efficiency upgrades and utility bills. It also supports education access, child care services, and specialized care to help individuals overcome barriers to success and reduces crime rates by reducing poverty, while promoting economic mobility and fairer income distribution. In a corporate context, employee welfare schemes, such as insurance, paid leave, and childcare support, boost productivity, engagement, and retention. In fact, welfare schemes provide financial assistance, nutritional support programmes, subsidized health services as well as assistance with housing costs.
Alumni associations, on the other hand, provide significant advantages by facilitating professional networking, career advancement, and lifelong connections. Members benefit from exclusive job boards, mentoring, and industry insights, alongside perks like campus access, event discounts, and continued learning opportunities, helping both personal growth and professional development.
Alumni associations provide access to a vast network of graduates, allowing members to find mentors, connect with industry peers, and access exclusive job listings. They offer specialized career coaching, resume reviews, and industry events to support job transitions and career growth.
Many alumni associations provide ongoing education, including workshops, seminars, and webinars on industry trends and leadership development. Members often receive benefits such as discounts on insurance (car, home, health), continuing education, and retail products. Some offer access to campus facilities like libraries and gyms. They foster a sense of community, helping graduates stay connected with former classmates and friends through reunions, regional chapters, and social events.
The Associations offer structured opportunities for alumni to volunteer, mentor current students, and donate to support scholarships or university infrastructure. Members stay updated on the latest developments, research, and news from their alma mater. These networks not only support individual graduates but also strengthen the institution’s reputation and community engagement.
Welfare schemes in alumni associations provide a critical support system that transforms the association from a social club into a safety net, fostering deeper loyalty and engagement among members. These schemes offer tangible, personal, and professional support during key life events.
The Associations provide assistance in times of sickness, bereavement, or personal emergencies, offering financial aid or emotional support to members and their families. Welfare initiatives often cover the celebration of life achievements, such as weddings, births, graduations, ordinations, final professions, anniversaries, which enhances bonding and loyalty to the association.
Beyond socializing, these schemes create a trusted community where alumni can secure job recommendations, access career counseling, and find new business opportunities.
Many associations now include empowerment initiatives, such as organizing motivational, financial, or entrepreneurship workshops to help members grow. Welfare-focused associations bridge the gap between experienced professionals and younger graduates, offering mentorship programmes that aid in career advancement. Members often receive access to exclusive benefits, including discounted insurance services, banking, and reduced rates on travel or hospitality.
Welfare schemes are essential for maintaining an engaged, active, and supportive alumni network, ensuring the association provides tangible value to its members throughout their lives.
It is in recognition of the numerous benefits provided by welfare schemes of alumni associations that the Mount La Salle Old Students Association (MOLOSA) in its 2023 annual convention instituted a Welfare Scheme with the mandate to carter for the welfare of members. The scheme has provided a MOLOSA Welfare Policy Document, which spells out the guiding principle of the scheme including benefits accruable to members.
Within its short time of existence, the leadership of the scheme has reached out to many members on their weddings, ordinations, final professions, anniversaries, the bereaved among others, while bills of terminal illness of members upon verification by the committee are shared among members to save their lives.
However, the committee managing MOLOSA welfare scheme lacks financial strength to embark on other welfare packages. So far, 71 alumni have registered for the scheme out of which less than 30 are consistent in their payment of annual subscription. Meanwhile, the institution has graduated many students, who are into different life endeavours both at home and in the Diaspora. I urge all graduates of the institution to join the scheme for their good and the good of others.
Abuse of alumni association welfare schemes often stems from mismanagement, lack of transparency, and the pursuit of personal interests over collective benefits. I therefore caution the OLS Asen Ter Abraham led management committee of the scheme to abide by the legally bind policy document guiding the operations of the scheme. They should resist the temptation of diverting funds meant for support of members in times of need to their personal use. Funds intended for members’ welfare should not be embezzled.
Elsewhere, some members use welfare associations to advance personal political interests or secure influence, leading to disruption of meaningful projects. That should not be the case with MOLOSA welfare scheme.
Lack of transparency and accountability in managing such financial schemes often lead to distrust and weaken the association’s purpose, I suggest that the committee should provide fora where members will be briefed on the income and expenditure of the scheme from time to time.
