Best Wishes for the Holiday Season!

With the holidays and New Year just around the corner, we wanted to briefly reflect on the milestones Comptel achieved in 2011. Most notably, we celebrated our 25^th anniversary, which is pretty remarkable in the telecoms software industry. Comptel was also honoured for multiple awards, announced several customer projects like the catalog-driven service fulfillment deal with NBN CO, unveiled our Next Generation Fulfillment Strategy and hosted a successful 14^th annual User Group.

Each holiday season, we send our greeting cards electronically and donate the money saved from the traditional, printed cards to a charitable fund. This year, Comptel has selected Plan International to receive our donation (last year, we worked with the Kileva Foundation). It is one of the oldest and largest children’s development organisations in the world, and works to promote child rights and bring millions out of poverty.

Comptel’s donation will support Plan’s mission to achieve lasting improvements in the quality of children’s lives in at least 50 developing countries. For those who would like to get involved with Plan International, you can learn more here.

To all our customers, partners, investors and friends, we wish you a peaceful and happy holiday season and look forward to another fruitful and cooperative year in 2012!

Working with the Kileva Foundation

During the day, I work as a Global Alliance Director for Comptel Corporation, but as Olivier noted in a previous blog post, I run a charity called the Kileva Foundation in my spare time.

It all started back in 2001 when my wife and I met a man called Kilele whilst we were on holiday in southern Kenya. Kilele and I remained in touch, and over the next two years, the bond between us grew strong. Although I’d never visited his home in the remote Sagalla Mountain, I felt that I was beginning to get to know his extended family and friends through his letters. It was with great delight that I heard early in 2004 that his wife Grace was pregnant, but it was with complete astonishment that, when his son was born, that he named him Cliff after me!

By the end of 2005, I was speaking to Kilele on a regular basis (he had a mobile phone but no electricity or running water at his house) about the life of his family and the entire Sagalla community. It was during one of those conversations that Kilele announced that he was going to get “properly” married, i.e. have a full religious ceremony. He explained the traditions of such a marriage, including that as many as 2,000 people might attend and that he wanted Jane and I to be best lady and best man!

We of course were honoured and travelled to their home village of Kizumanzi in Kenya to attend the wedding on 14 February 2006. This was probably the most incredible week of our lives! People came from villages all over the remote Sagalla Mountain (the high region) and from those at the foot of the mountain (the low region). The celebrations went on for three days, and we were treated as honoured (and unusual) guests.

When I returned to England, I was determined to do as much as I could for the Sagallan people, and by September, the Kileva Foundation (the name was derived by combining the first three letters of Kilele’s name with the first three letters of my surname – Evans) was formally registered with the Charity Commission of England & Wales.

Since then, the charity has initiated and run the following projects:

• Education: Building and running the Kileva Foundation Primary School in the village of Mwakoma. So far, a pre-school, four classrooms, two toilet blocks and a school house have been completed.
• Health: Building the Kileva Foundation Medical Dispensary and Community Centre in the village of Kirumbi.
• Farming:
  • Bees: In cooperation with the Save The Elephants organization, the Kileva Foundation has built two test bee hive fences to deter crop-raiding elephants.
  • Plantation: The Kileva Plantation Nursery (managed by the Kileva Scout Group) has grown many thousands of seedlings for re-planting throughout the region.
  • Poultry: The Kileva Poultry Business currently has 600 broilers and 50 layers.
  • Dairy: The Kileva Dairy Farm consists of two cows and one bull. A number of calves have been reared along with many goats.

If you would like to learn more about the work of the charity (and thank you to Comptel for recently making a donation instead of buying and sending printed Christmas cards), please visit www.kilevafoundation.com.

Season’s Greetings from Comptel

2010 was quite a busy year for Comptel—we attended tradeshows all over the world, hosted our annual User Group event and first-ever analyst day, and expanded our Comptel Dynamic OSS portfolio with Comptel Control and Charge and Comptel Dynamic SIM Management.

For the past couple of years, Comptel has been sending season’s greeting cards electronically and donating the money saved from the traditional, printed cards to a charitable fund.  This year, Comptel has selected the Kileva Foundation.

The Kileva Foundation was started by Godwin Kilele and Comptel’s Cliff Evans.  All of the Kileva Foundation’s funds support various projects in villages located outside Kenya, including Mwakoma and Kirumbi.  Since its establishment, the Kileva Foundation has seeded a plantation, constructed a school and a medical dispensary, and is now in the planning process of building a community centre.

Comptel’s donation will go towards the Kileva Eastfield Primary School to assist the building of a fifth classroom.  We are pleased to be involved with this thoughtful organization.  For those who would like to learn more about the Kileva Foundation, check out its blog at http://kileva.wordpress.com/.

We wish all of our customers, partners, investors and friends a safe, healthy and happy holiday season, and look forward to what 2011 will bring!