News & Media

By Siprosa Rabach, Head – Safal MRM Foundation

Giving back to the community is at the heart of what we do. At MRM, we have four pillars under the Safal MRM Foundation namely: Education, Health, Shelter and Environment. With the business growth and expansion, we remain committed to giving back to the community and continue to actively engage in projects and activities that support the functions of the Foundation.

As the foundation, we are delighted to have implemented projects set to improve the lives of our beneficiaries and communities around our areas of operations in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. This year in Kenya, despite 2022 being an election year, we managed to roll out our activities successfully, thanks to our sponsors and commitment of our staff.

The impact and results of the projects that were implemented by the third quarter of 2022 have been quite substantial. Our flagship education project, the Mabati Technical Training Institute (MTTI), for example, successfully enrolled 685 trainees by the third quarter. The second half of the year saw the introduction of new courses in Accounting Technician Diploma (ATD) and Solar installation. We believe that the new courses will increase opportunities for many disadvantaged youth in Kilifi County to acquire relevant and desirable skills to enable them access more job opportunities and earn decent income after graduation. We are delighted to report that the 77 trainees who sat for the National Industrial Training Authority (NITA) in August excelled with over 99% pass.  75% of these graduates have secured decent jobs in the last 2 months in the different sectors.

Our Mabati Medical Centre focuses on creating a healthy community in Kilifi County by providing quality and affordable healthcare in an effort to improve the prosperity of families. The Medical Centre continues to provide quality and affordable medical services, not only to patients around Kilifi, but also received referrals from Mombasa and Kwale counties. We can proudly say that more than 21,000 patients have been successfully impacted by the quality and affordable health program. In line with our preventive healthcare goal, we have successfully coordinated a free medical outreach camp in Mariakani where community members benefited from various counselling, health checks, and consultation.

Thanks to the support from our suppliers, we managed to organize community health outreach programs in Mariakani to promote preventive healthcare by reaching out to more vulnerable households adversely affected by the Covid 19 pandemic. These medical outreaches also enabled us to create awareness about our health programs at the Mabati Medical Center, to sensitize members of the community about preventive healthcare.

By the first half of the year, the Medical Centre had received and seen 14,337 patients. 4,233 lab tests were conducted, 276 people had been vaccinated against COVID 19 and 357 children received routine immunizations.

The above results speak to the extensive impact our Medical Centre is having to the people of Kilifi County and its environs and we continue to be grateful to our partners and supporters who have helped us so far and hope that we can do so much more in the coming years.

The country is currently experiencing severe drought that has left majority of Kenyans at its mercies. The residents of Kilifi Ccounty haven’t been spared by its wrath. With support from Premchandbhai Foundation, we have been able to distribute relief food to 3000 families in Tsangatsini, Ribe and Ganze. Bahari Forwarders Limited provided 2 trucks for transporting the food from Nairobi to Mombasa and Lions Club Pwani donated solar light bulbs to 500 families.  We are delighted that such multi sectoral actions will continue in the next few months to enable us mitigate the adverse effects of drought that has left many families vulnerable and food insecure. Our communities are at the heart of what we do and it’s important to us to stand by them during such trying times.

Our efforts stretch to creation of favorable living environments. That said, Mabati rolling Mills doesn’t only offer building solutions, but also living solutions. We build shelters for the less fortunate in our communities and ensure that more people have a place they can call home. Our environmental efforts don’t end there. We understand the importance of nature and our environmental interventions are equally focused on educating school going children on the importance of environmental conservation, tree planting and waste management.

In the last quarter, we successfully planted 6,000 trees in 10 public schools around Mariakani alongside provision of environmental education through our program dubbed the beautification and greening of community schools in Kilifi County. The tree planting initiative has been jointly implemented in partnership with the Global Peace Foundation.

It remains our obligation to give back to a community that for over 60 years has firmly stood by our side. A wise person once said, “The greatness of a community is most accurately measured by the compassionate actions of its members”. May we know them, may we be them, may we raise them.