Bio-center ground breaking ceremony

On 14th February 2008, the Huruma community had a special celebration for this year’s Valentine’s Day with the opening of Mji Wa Huruma Project at the Huruma village - a project under Nairobi River Basin Programme. The celebrations included a ground-breaking ceremony for the construction of a bio-latrine and a ceremonial tree-planting in Karura Forest.

In attendance were the Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China to Kenya, H.E. Mr. Ming Zhang, and dignitaries from UNEP, UNDP and UN-Habitat as well as from the Provincial Administration, Kenya Forest Service, African Banking Cooperation Ltd. (ABC Bank) and Umande Trust.

The Chinese Embassy donated another $25,000 to UNEP for the construction of the Bio-latrine in the Huruma village - the Embassy’s second cooperation with UNEP after the MCEDO-Beijing School in Mathare Valley. H.E. Mr. Ming Zhang commended this initiative to improve the sanitation conditions for the underprivileged community and pledged to continuously support UNEP in its efforts in the future. After the speeches, the Ambassador presented a cheque to Ms. Cristina Boelcke, the Director of DRC/UNEP. The two later broke the ground after admiring the plaque which stated that the foundation stone was laid by the Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China.

The Chinese ambassador to Kenya dancing with the community

It is expected that the construction of the Bio-latrine will take approximately 8 months from the day of the ceremony when the construction process kicked off.

After the ground-breaking, the guests proceeded to the contiguous Karura Forest for tree-planting, where 100 indigenous trees were planted. The ABC bank kindly provided ceramic plaques with carvings of the names of those who had planted certain trees. These included Ambassador H.E. Mr. Ming Zhang, UNEP’s ED Mr. Achim Steiner, UNDP Resident Coordinator Ms. Elizabeth Lwanga, UN-HABITAT’s ED Ms. Anna Tibaijuka, Kenya Forest Service, the Area Chief and ABC Bank.

Mr. Zhijia Wang, Mr. Chris Gakahu and Mr. Harrison Kwach planted a tree on behalf of the ED of UNEP, UNDP Resident Coordinator and the ED of UN-HABITAT respectively.

The ceremony proved to be a huge success thanks to the great efforts of the Huruma community, Umande Trust and the sponsors of the project. It casts a good start for the Project.