Employee of the Month – July 2026
Some jobs are measured in hours. Salome’s is measured in the reunions she makes possible.
As one of Rafiki Mwema’s Outreach team, Salome Njuguna spends her days doing work that rarely shows up on a roster: tracing parents who have gone missing, sitting beside children in their hardest moments, and quietly going further than anyone asked her to. This month, the Rafiki Mwema team voted to recognise her as our Employee of the Month, and the stories behind that vote speak for themselves.
A finder of the lost
Time and again, Salome has taken on the painstaking work of tracing family members whose whereabouts had been lost, sometimes for years. In one case, she pieced together a handful of reluctant clues from a father who didn’t want to be found, and eventually traced a mother the children had feared was gone for good. On the day of the reunion, Salome woke long before dawn, travelled hours by public transport, and searched estate by estate until she found her, carrying a little girl’s hope safely the whole way.
In another case, she traced two sisters’ mother after months of searching, opening the door to structured visits and, eventually, a full reintegration this year. “The tracing being successful made the concerned children settle, having known that their mother was found,” one colleague shared.
A steady presence in hard moments
Salome has also stood beside children as they faced some of the most difficult days of their lives, including giving evidence in court. Colleagues describe her calm, reassuring presence as the difference between a child feeling safe enough to speak, and a child feeling alone.
“Her presence provided emotional stability, enabling the girl to deliver a clear and impactful testimony,” one nominator wrote.
Going further, always
Beyond her outreach work, Salome has visited women’s prisons to support mothers separated from their children, stepped in to help with the girls’ house whenever she’s needed, and built trust with families who once saw Rafiki Mwema as the enemy. Her colleagues call her a mother figure to staff and children alike, someone who leaves home before dawn and returns long after dark, again and again, without being asked.
