Janmohamed - corporate social responsibility

We have done a lot of pioneering. We were the pioneers in terms of tourism in Kenya, in Tanzania and I think the, our mission is very clear. It’s; yes, profits are important. Our projects must be self-sustainable but we’ve got to make a difference whether it is, you know, with the local communities that live around where we are present, whether it is with our staff, our human resources. We invest quite a lot in their capacity building, training them, developing them. When it comes to environmental issues, you know, we will not develop a property unless we have carried out environmental impact assessment studies to make sure that we’re not going to damage the environment.  

Wherever we are we will, we will look at what difference we can make whether it’s; a good example in Tanzania when we first started, perhaps 80 % of our supplies used to come from Kenya or South Africa. Today, 95% of our supplies are local. So over a period of time we encourage local suppliers to meet our standards, to try and you know, meet our standards and you know, gear up to supplying us. We’ve done the same in some of our remote areas wherever we are. And I think, you know, this is, this is very important.  

We are very fortunate to work for an organization that really values a lot of these you know; whether it’s the environment, whether it’s being responsible, transparent, making an impact in the areas we are in, you know this is pretty unique. And I think that is satisfying. We are just not judged on the amount of money we produce. If you look at our board reporting, there is a whole section on what, you know what we do whether it’s for the communities or on our reforestation programs or turtles in Mombasa.  

We believe that we must conserve nature and there are many such examples where we have demonstrated that, you know, we’ve got to be responsible players. We’ve got to make sure that, you know, we are making a positive impact where ever we are.