Eco-friendly empowerment
Innovation is not just inventiveness in the boardroom, lab or studio. Safaricom applies this even in its charity projects and is pushing CSR boundaries with a volunteerism programme that includes the economic empowerment of communities in the fragile northern rangelands ecosystem Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) ventures tend to be predictable affairs taking a few hours of the day, and graced by the media for smiley photo opportunities to be published in the dailies. If successful, corporate communication managers get their back pats, and the benefi ciaries swap the huge vinyl board cheques for the real thing. Everybody goes home happy and a problem is solved, albeit temporarily. Nobody signs up for a three-month stay in a harsh, poverty-shackled corner of Kenya in the name of CSR. But then, Safaricom’s ingenuity in CSR may entail just that through their World of Difference initiative that was launched in February 2009. This is a voluntary programme for Safaricom’s employees, that seeks to make a real difference in communities by providing practical solutions to real problems in a sustainable and benefi cial manner… in a manner that genuinely focuses on the benefi ciaries and is not just a public relations exercise in corporate ego rubdown. Volunteerism Safaricom Foundation ...
You are connected
Niko na Safaricom Iteret, somewhere in North Horr, a remote dot on the Kenyan map. A pastoralist works his cellphone’s keypad and is soon chatting away with a fellow villager. Nearby, in the bandit-prone Turkana-Pokot boarder, armed home guards and members of both communities top up their Safaricom phones as they monitor the security situation in their areas. And in urban locales all over Kenya, hardly anybody notices the habitual ring of mobile phones and the thumbing of keyboards to access the Internet. In these areas, this is a norm, a lifestyle and expected cultural mannerism. Within the hour, one man on the second floor of Safaricom House will be getting reports from a team of technicians on the network quality of all these calls, text messages and data throughput. That man is John Barorot, Safaricom’s Chief Technical Officer (CTO), to whom Niko na Safaricom is not just the tag of a melodious rendition of the company’s promotional jingle of countrywide network coverage. This simple three-word declaration summarises his passion and main role at Safaricom. Staid, but with a cheery smile, he hardly betrays the festive season frenzy as we settle for this interview, just three days shy of Christmas. He’s ...
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Cover Story
Eco-friendly empowerment
Innovation is not just inventiveness in the boardroom, lab or studio. Safaricom applies this even in its charity projects and is pushing CSR boundaries with a volunteerism programme that includes the economic empowerment of communities in the fragile northern rangelands ecosystem Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) ventures tend to be predictable... [Read more of this review]
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