Kalobeyei, Kenya 7 November 2017-- With funding from the Government of Japan, UN-Habitat is seeking to support sustainable livelihoods development complementing the Turkana County Government efforts geared towards improving livelihoods of the host community and refugees in Kalobeyei Settlement. The new approach aims to respond with improved services and public facilities for the refugee and host communities in order to minimize conflict over resources and livelihoods opportunities between refugees and host communities.

Supported sustainable livelihoods development for refugees and host communities will contribute to increasing opportunities to achieve skills and to increase the capacity of refugees and host communities to further develop and maintain their livelihoods.

The Community Centre will be designed and constructed in Kalobeyei Settlement, Kenya. The design and construction processes include public participation at all stages and linking local skill training and capacity development to the implementation process. A series of community participatory design workshops were organized for the host and refugee community participants to contribute with the expectations of their community to the final design based on their needs and priorities. Upon successfully completing the participatory design processes, the project team has integrated insights from the communities in a set of technical designs that will be followed for the construction.

In the first week of November, UN-Habitat together with the implementation partner AAR Japan organized a three day training workshop for 30 participants from the host and the refugee communities to provide them with basic construction skills with the aim of providing them the capacity to participate in the Community Centre construction. The project is planned to be complete by February 2018.

Owuor, one of the participants highlighted that, ‘Being refugees, the project will help us to promote peace, interact with the host community, get more skills and promote our culture’.
The community center, which will be located in village 2 in Kalobeyei Settlement, is centrally placed to ensure easy accessibility by users from the two communities to meet and work together. Being the first social facility in the settlement, it is expected that it will promote integration and provide space for users to develop inspiring projects that bring together residents from different nationalities, small groups, and local community to learn, engage in development of services and activities that encourage participationt.to improve social and economic engagement.