Community Development:
Ngerende Island Lodge is committed to empowering the local communities by providing sustainable employment including purchasing wherever possible supplies locally, by providing in-house and formal training and on a very practical note has donated a beautiful canvas and thatch Rondel at Ngerende Airstrip, in the same style as the boutique lodge, for the local Masai women. The craft shop is an outlet for the Masai women to sell their crafts to guests arriving and departing from the airstrip and enables them to derive direct revenue from the project. Management at Ngerende Island Lodge firmly believes luxury, comfort and style go hand in hand with conservation and community empowerment.

70 % of the staff at Ngerende Island Lodge are recruited from the local Masai communities. Management accepts applicants by recommendation who have they believe the potential, provides them with rigorous on- the- job training in-house. Normally trainees will start as personal butlers helping to meet the high standards set at the boutique lodge for both the suites and the restaurant .The lodge has sponsored Rosemary who was a stewardess in the kitchen for formal training in Nairobi to be a masseuse and currently she is training as a supervisor in the house keeping department. There are plans to send the Masai staffs that have had in-house training for more formal training at Utalii College, the prestigious school for the hospitality and service industry in Kenya. This will ensure staff from the local communities have proper training and will enable them to achieve supervisory and management positions in the lodge or indeed in the diverse and dynamic tourism industry in general in Kenya.

Eco-Friendly Initiatives at Ngerende Island Lodge:

* Opposite bank of the Mara River leased and fenced to protect Hippos.
* Providing the local Masai women with a retail outlet for their goods.
* Providing employment to the local communities surrounding Ngerende.
* Training local Masai in-house for the butler service.
* Tree planting activities for guests.
* Solar panels are used for heating water.
* Solar pump used for extracting water from borehole.
* Invested heavily on inverters for lighting and kitchen equipment with the use of inverters reducing generator use to only 4 hours in 24 hours and reducing the level of noise from the generator.
* Boutique lodge in the process of investing in solar panels to work with inverters and phase out use of generator long term.
* Most vegetables and herbs grown in Ngerende’s own kitchen garden and others purchased locally
* Harvesting of rain water for re-use for irrigation on the lodge lawns.
* Boutique Lodge in the process of setting up a recycling plant for the garden.