Featured project - Sanitation facilities for Kenyan slum
£45,500 for Kibera slum sanitation facilities
Thousands of desperately poor people living in Kenya’s overcrowded urban areas are seeing their lives transformed by all-in-one biocentres funded by the Halcrow Foundation.
A highly successful pilot centre in Kibera has been serving up to 500 people since 2007. Now, thanks to a £20,000 foundation grant, a new centre is to be built in Kisumu, western Kenya.
Crowded together in the low-income settlement of Obunga, the industrial area of Kisumu, people face a grinding daily struggle for fresh water and toilet facilities. Latrines are few and far between and of poor quality. In recent years cholera has broken out several times in Obunga’s densely-crowded back lanes, claiming dozens of lives.
The £20,000 two-storey biocentre will house a public toilet block divided into male and female sections with showers and water taps. Solid waste will be converted to organic fertiliser with methane piped to a gas cooker in the first floor kitchen.
A community centre on the second floor will be used for meetings, markets or as a café. A water kiosk will be erected beside the biocentre, ensuring a constant supply of fresh water.
Around 500 local people will use the sanitation facilities on a daily basis, and the kitchen and community facilities should also provide a focus for up to 3,000 people in a settlement which has practically no infrastructure. It is hoped the centre will be open by late 2010.
The design will be based on the highly successful Gatwekera biocentre in Kibera – also funded by the Halcrow Foundation – but will be adapted to suit local needs through consultation with the community.
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Video produced April 2012
Rob Clarke talks about the success of the Kibera biocentre, gaining the trust of local residents and how collective co-operation can bring about lasting change.
Opened in 2007 to serve people living in sub-Saharan Africa’s largest slum, the Kibera biocentre received a £10,000 grant from the Halcrow Foundation. Prior to the facility’s construction, residents endured squalid sanitary conditions with faeces lying in the streets. Women walking to communal toilet areas late at night were especially at risk of assault and attack.
The Kisumu biocentre is the latest Kenyan project to be funded through the Halcrow Foundation, working with the Umande Trust. As well as the Kibera biocentre, Halcrow has funded emergency relief work in Kibera and the construction of a latrine block for children at a school in Nyarima.