Safaricom - 2021 Sustainable Business Report

69 SAFARICOM SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS REPORT 2021 / STANDING TOGETHER: GOING BEYOND / OUR MATERIAL TOPICS //// OUR STAKEHOLDERS / KPI SUMMARY The sanitary towel distribution drive is part of M-PESA Foundation’s KSh 44 million menstrual hygiene programme launched in December 2020 as part of Safaricom’s 20th anniversary celebrations. The programme’s other element, executed with a different partner, includes providing another 30 000 teenage girls in Murang’a, Siaya and Kilifi Counties and 10 000 boys with sexual and reproductive health education as well as innerwear, sanitary towels and bar soap. ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT The Safaricom Foundation’s Wezesha programme seeks to empower the youth and women through skills training to enable them access economic opportunities. The programme is being implemented in partnership with Generations and Cloud Factory. The programme comprises of the following: • The Wezesha Generation Programme aims to provide unemployed youth aged 18 – 35 across the country with job-ready skills in financial services sales, distributed sales, retail and restaurant services, sewing machine operation and customer service. A total of 279 youth graduated in 2020 against a three-year target (2018-2021) of 1 634 student enrolments into the training programme. The target is lagging due to the inability to access remote learning because of the COVID-19 pandemic. • Wezesha Agri aims to empower the youth and women by supporting them with access to farm inputs, learning content and the required land infrastructure. Close to 800 youth in Oloitokitok, Kajiado County have benefitted from the agribusiness programme. There are four value chains supported in Oloitokitok. Beans and sunflower will be rain fed while tomatoes and onions which are high value chains will be grown under furrow irrigation. Since inception, Wezesha Agri has impacted 576 youth and 129 women have been trained in high-value crops farming. Another 50 young women in Bungoma are also being supported in poultry farming. • Participants have access to input loans of between KSh 5 000 – KSh 20 000 depending on the value chain with those producing high value crops also receiving financial support to increase access to water and improve irrigation systems. • Additionally, the programme provides the farmers access to a guaranteed market for their produce at favourable rates. The pilot programme had been running for five months at year end with a view of scaling it up to other parts of the country thereafter. • The Safaricom Foundation has partnered with digital workforce firm CloudFactory and Generation Kenya , independent non-profit organisations in a programme to empower youth with necessary digital skills in today’s tech workplaces. Potential candidates undergo a competitive interview process to secure places on a two-week intensive digital training course run by CloudFactory Kenya. CloudFactory training was paused in March 2020 due to COVID-19 and resumed in September 2020 when the virtual training of 40 youths was piloted. HEALTH An estimated 478 000 Kenyans are living with diabetes, 60% of whom are unaware while it is estimated that the number of children living with diabetes is increasing at a rate of 3.5% annually. Against this backdrop, the Safaricom Foundation’s Non-Communicable Diseases Programme in Garissa County screened 2 042 children for diabetes, of whom 146 individuals were enrolled in the diabetes management programme. In addition, a total of 157 Community Health Volunteers (CHVs) received training. The Safaricom Foundation’s Afya-Uzazi Salama programme is a partnership with PharmAccess Foundation that focuses on improving health service delivery infrastructure, building skills of health workers, enhancing community-based information and education and health care financing. In FY21, the Foundation built a new maternal high dependency unit and a newborn unit at Baringo County Hospital at a cost of KSh 11 million. The Foundation also invested KSh 7.3 million in a newborn unit and new borehole at Barwessa Health Centre in Baringo County.