Helping build a sustainable future for the community in Tsavo, Kenya

Since 2017, the Robert Walters Group has partnered with the Global Angels Foundation to support the Itinyi Valley community in Tsavo, Kenya. There, in one of the country’s driest regions, the local people are living in extreme poverty, with limited access to proper nutrition and clean drinking water.

The Robert Walters Group is committed to playing an active role in transforming Tsavo — not only by raising money for key projects, each year sending employees to volunteer to work on key projects with Global Angels in Kenya.

In the Itinyi Valley, women are walking 10-15km a day in extreme weather conditions to collect water from polluted watering holes shared with livestock.

On Friday, 8 July 2022, Robert Walters Group employees embarked on a global 24-hour challenge to walk, run, row, skip and swim 6,341 miles — the distance from our London headquarters to the Itinyi Valley in Tsavo — and raise vital funds for the Global Angels Foundation clean water project.

 

The clean water project will create more watering holes and provide clean water for small villages, preventing disease and creating a healthier life for every member of the local community.

PHOTO GALLERY

“We’re really passionate about coming alongside the people here in this community, and helping lift them out of poverty, and to do that, we need to be here long-term and build a really solid project that is a model that can be replicated right across the valley.”

Molly Bedingfield
Founder, Global Angels Foundation

Photos: Afshin Feiz

“Step up, be an angel” — our staff volunteers

Each year, we send eight volunteers to Tsavo to work with the Itinyi Valley community, building critical pieces of infrastructure to support sustainable farming and provide access to clean drinking water.

We’ve also invested in building a new classroom at the local secondary school, giving students the option to further their educations, as well as a community farm centre and mill to process crops and teach people about sustainable farming practices.

While we were unable to send volunteers during the pandemic, our annual volunteer trips are now taking place again.

James Flavin, lead recruiter partner from our Resource Solutions business, was selected to volunteer in 2019. “This experience taught me that I have a responsibility in this world to do good,” James observed. "I've come back with a real sense of purpose to help others."

Loïc Vives, marketing manager for our Walters People business in France, saw the true collaborative partnership in action. "With the long-term investments made by the partnership the community now has tools which help it grow. The investments in education and agriculture are creating jobs and aspirations and the hope in the community is tangible and concrete. It’s really humbling to witness first-hand."

And Matt Mitchell, a senior consultant in our Robert Walters business, volunteered in 2022, and saw first-hand the impact we are having. “I was so impressed by how well developed the project farm is," he said. "It was evident there has been a huge amount of ingenuity and creativeness to develop farming practices to suit the climate.”