Sidian Bank has committed KSh 1.5 million as a Gold sponsor of the AGC Tenwek Hospital Charity Golf Tournament, directing its investment toward one of the most underfunded corners of Kenya’s healthcare system: paediatric care for severely malnourished children.
The tournament, held at Kericho Golf Club, drew corporate leaders, golfers and community stakeholders together around a single purpose. Every shilling raised goes toward the “Hearts in Motion 2026” initiative and the construction of a dedicated Paediatric Unit at AGC Tenwek Hospital, a facility that will include a Malnutrition and Child Development Clinic and a Compassionate Paediatric Fund.
A Crisis That Arrives 20 Children at a Time
At least 20 children reach AGC Tenwek Hospital every month — more than 240 each year — presenting with severe malnutrition. In that condition, surgical risk climbs, recovery stretches, and the margin between survival and death narrows. Without nutritional stabilisation, treating the underlying medical condition becomes far harder and, in some cases, impossible.
The new Paediatric Unit targets that specific gap. It will provide early nutrition screenings, therapeutic feeding programmes and emergency stabilisation for children who arrive too sick to tolerate standard treatment. The Compassionate Paediatric Fund extends the reach further, covering care for families who cannot pay — a group the hospital already absorbs at a cost of approximately KSh 4 million every month in uncompensated care.
Judith Malel, Director of Fundraising and Development at AGC Tenwek Hospital, put the problem plainly: “Rural populations in Kenya face immense barriers to accessing quality healthcare, often forcing families to delay treatment until conditions become critical. Sidian Bank’s KSh 1.5 million sponsorship as a Gold partner ensures high-risk paediatric patients receive life-saving interventions regardless of their economic background.”
Why a Bank Writes a Cheque for a Children’s Ward
Sidian Bank CEO John Okulo framed the sponsorship as an extension of the bank’s responsibility to the communities it serves. “We have been able to partner with Tenwek and other corporates on this worthy cause,” he said, noting that malnutrition precedes every other medical problem in the region. “Before even getting any healthcare, they first need to be nourished before being treated. As a bank, it is important to participate in this activity as part of our contribution to society.”
The sponsorship sits within Sidian Bank’s broader positioning around the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, particularly SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being. For a commercial bank operating in Kenya’s mid-market, community investment of this kind carries both a social and a reputational return. Embedding the brand inside a hospital fundraiser that addresses child mortality and rural healthcare access places Sidian Bank in conversations that stretch well beyond financial services.
The Hospital Behind the Cause
AGC Tenwek Hospital, located in Bomet County, it functions as the only Level 6 referral hospital serving the South Rift, a catchment area that spans Bomet, Kericho, Narok and Kisii counties and extends into broader East Africa. It hosts hundreds of subspecialists from around the world each year and runs the largest cardiothoracic centre in Sub-Saharan Africa, performing 60% of all open-heart surgeries conducted in Kenya.
That scale makes the malnutrition gap all the more visible. A hospital capable of performing open-heart surgery still watches children arrive too undernourished to safely receive the interventions they need. The Paediatric Unit addresses that contradiction directly.
The Charity Golf Tournament forms one pillar of the hospital’s 2026 fundraising strategy alongside an executive dinner, medical outreaches and a charity run. The KSh 1.5 million from Sidian Bank anchors the corporate giving side of that effort, and signals to other potential sponsors that the business case for investing in this region’s health infrastructure is real.
