Saruni Basecamp believes in “impact investments”: they are investments made to generate positive and measurable changes in both the social and environmental habitats, alongside a financial return. They are not donations, they are profitable experiments on how businesses can and must improve nature, livelihoods, and landscapes, respecting the need of shareholders to make the business self-sustainable.
Our work has a positive impact not only on a staff of more than 330 people, 100% of them Kenyan and 86% of them from the local communities we work with, but on more than 6,600 landowners. They own the 1,2 million acres of land that we protect and are organized in several community-owned conservancies between Samburu and the Masai Mara. The biodiversity that we help preserve counts on 4,733 plants, 2,721 birds, 581 mammals and 393 reptiles and amphibians.
EcoTourism, the Kenyan organization that monitors, surveils, tests and rewards tourism hotels, promoting responsible practices, has rated five of our lodges and camps as part of the elite of Ecotourism-rated properties: Saruni Mara, Saruni Samburu, Saruni Eagle View Camp and Basecamp Masai Mara have the highest accolade, the Gold.
The tools to achieve our “impact” mission are many: paying fair salaries to employees and being an important taxpayer to the State, employing and training community members and giving them also senior management opportunities, saving emissions by recycling more than 10,000 kg, giving financial support to organizations that strengthen the communities’ belief in tourism and conservation as two sides of the same medal.
