Background

Socio-Environmental challenges have far reaching negative impacts on all communities, though it tends to be more severe amongst the marginalized and vulnerable sections of the society, such as refugees, refugee host communities, disaster prone communities, youth, women, widows, people with disabilities, and people living with HIV/Aids, among others.

Unfortunately, regulating and addressing Socio-Environmental issues are often viewed as the responsibility of Government and its development partners. This perception provided opportunities for exploitative interventions causing general social apathy when it comes to Socio-Environmental engagements, resulting in interventions with maleficent social outcomes, thus the need for individual, community and institutional efforts to identify and define Socio – Environmental issues as a primary civic responsibility.

Deprived, desperate, ignorant, un-empowered people are usually un-engaged and apathetic to their situations, which situations tend to be exacerbated by Socio-Environmental interactions, such as unfavorable and exploitative commercial dealings, exploitative social relations, climate change and its impacts, among others and often need protection and support and to wait for this to come from Government is literally endure a slow death. Individuals, Communities and Institutions can be mobilized to take charge and address some of these issues as they arise, as Government and its development partners join in.

It is based on this premise that SELLMARK pursues a Corporate-led approach to address local Socio-Environmental challenges, particularly those with significant Social and Environmental Impacts. Corporate citizens with their vast networks and resources are therefore expected to embrace and lead in providing solutions to challenge relating to these two areas.