Over the years, Ufadhili Trust has been at the fore front in advocating for Social Responsibility. Ufadhili believes Social Responsibility, whether personal or corporate, means the willingness by a person or an organisation to take responsibility and be accountable for the impacts created by its activities and decisions.
An increasing number of Kenyan companies are reaching out to society as part of their social responsibility. Research shows that about 60% of these efforts by companies are not strategic and are ad-hoc. This has lead to limited impact created for both business and society. As part of Ufadhili’s ongoing work to assist companies make CSR an integral part of business strategy and practice, Ufadhili organized a half day workshop attended by fifty corporate executives on 29/11/11aimed at helping corporate managers gain a deeper understanding of this important concept and business practice.
The theme of the workshop dubbed “Strategic Corporate Community Engagement” was facilitated by industry experts and discussions were supported by case study presentations from leading companies in the area of community engagement, such as Barclays Bank Kenya and AAR Medical Services; one of the leading medical service providers in the region. These two companies demonstrated how engaging from their strengths has helped create a bigger impact in the community. AAR health service is using its core competencies in the area of Health to address poor school performance among students affected by intestinal worms by carrying out health camps where school children are de-wormed regularly. The company has set up an elaborate initiative dubbed Trees for Health deworming programme’ that aims to encourage schools to be come self sustainable in their energy and basic health needs. Barclays Bank Kenya on the other hand, is one of the leading companies in Kenya that has managed to develop a strategic employee engagement programme that has seen its staff nationwide champion causes the company supports. Delegates were therefore able to learn fast hand from the experiences of their peers who talked about candidly about their successes, challenges and lessons learnt in their journey.
The workshop intended to bring back some business sense into the good trend of community engagement among Kenyan companies. Delegates learnt how they can develop an effective strategy and how community engagement; if done well, has the potential to improve a company’s reputation and brand value while also creating lasting positive impacts in the society.
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