Monarda Commodities is a leading food and agri-business.

Monarda is a member of the Sustainable Rice Platform.

There is a folk saying that one must not make holes in the very bowl one eats. The earth and all its resources are the very bowl that we eat in – it nourishes us, provides us with shelter, and allows us to thrive on it. Social responsibility is merely ensuring that this source of wellness and prosperity does not run out.

The Monarda social responsibility initiative is called the Wema Works Initiative. ‘Wema’ is the Swahili word for ‘kindness’ and embodies the spirit in which this initiative was started. Here are some of the on-going programs that Monarda has undertaken under the Wema Works umbrella:

This is an apprenticeship offered by Monarda to 15 young men and women in the markets that we operate in. These young apprentices are trained to research and implement sustainable practices into the Monarda business. By training young talent, we ensure that we leave behind a stronger, more sustainable society, each time. The Wema Works team is responsible for the sourcing and selection of these apprentices who are paid a generous stipend, along with valuable training, for their contribution.

At Monarda, we believe in encouraging all employees, vendors, leaders, and partners to lend a hand to help others. In all the markets where we have a footprint, we try to mobilize our human resources to help the community. This is often in the shape of hunger-alleviation drives, literacy-promotion drives, and tree-plantation drives. Our teams identify resource-deficient areas and move our internal resources to make up for the deficiencies. We have delivered food to food-insecure districts, distributed books and other literacy tools to under-educated communities, and planted trees in plantation-impoverished areas.

While Monarda has a considerable footprint in the markets we engage in, our aspiration for the future is to have an ‘invisible footprint’. This means that we are working towards minimizing our carbon foot print by taking actions such as: using electric vehicles wherever possible, switching to sustainable sources of energy (e.g. wind and solar power), increasingly using biodegradable packaging material for our products, and minimizing greenhouse gas emissions through the increasing use of non-motored vehicles such as bicycles and roller-cars.