Umande Trust

Staff at Umande Trust recently checked in with the Lindi Usafi bio-centre and was delighted to find how significant an impact the bio-centre has continued to have on the Lindi community. This was no surprise considering how far the bio-centre has come and the partnership community members have with Umande. Tucked within a collection of housing structures in Lindi, the bio-centre was first initiated in 2006 and developed a bit slowly, but is today on the fast-track towards being completely finished and operational. Since its beginnings, one could begin to see the increase in sanitation surrounding the bio-centre, a decrease in illness within the community, and a new location for community members to hold events and activities.  Unique to this bio-centre is its connection to a nearby set of latrines. These latrines have a history of their own, once being dilapidated to the point of extreme disgust, as can be seen in the below picture. Umande, having already constructed the Lin

Recently we visited the Multi-vision Self-Help Group’s biocenter in the Gatwikira area of Kibera and spoke with one of the community members running the biocenter. The Muvi group partnered with Umande in 2006, and the biocenter has been fully operational since 2008. They are able to serve 250-300 people daily, including men, women, children, and the disabled; they offer toilets, cold showers, hot showers, biogas for cooking, and a community center on the upper floor of the building. Gatwikira has been able to put in place the Beba cashless payment system, which has increased transparency and accountability for the group, and has increased security for the caretakers and the biocenter’s users, who do not need to carry cash in order to use the biocenter.             Gatwikira is a heavily populated area in Kibera; it is mostly filled with homes, as well as one school. The addition of the biocenter has increased sanitation in the area and decreased related health issues. The affo

Impact of the Kopo Kopo Cashless Payment System  When asked about how the Jasho Letu bio-centre has impacted his life, Kibera resident Morris Odoyo said, “I feel better about this. There are less flying toilets.” Created in 2007, Jasho Letu offers both daily and monthly payment for use of its toilets and cold showers. One time use of the toilet and shower cost 5 and 10 shillings respectively, while monthly use costs 150 shillings. In addition to the bio-centre’s 15 monthly clients, one-time use patrons bring in about 7,000 shillings a week. One factor attributing to its success is the introduction of a cashless payment system that allows for both mobile payment and electronic transfer of cash transactions. This open-loop platform—called Kopo Kopo—allows customers to pay for bio-centre services using Safaricom’s M-PESA service to top-up credit on their mobile phone. With M-PESA, customers can immediately pay for bio-centre amenities and are not charged any additional fees; ra

Kibagare biocentre is an innovative solution to the pervasive sanitation problems in the slums. PHOTO | JOHN MBARIA   By JOHN MBARIA Posted  Wednesday, October 15  2014 at  14:00 IN SUMMARY ·          Aptly called bio-sanitation centres (or biocentres), the complexes are one-stop shops for a host of services and businesses: Money transfer, offices, residential rooms, halls for hire, libraries, computer labs, kitchens (where clients pay a fee to cook), and bio-digesters that convert human waste into biogas and chemical fertiliser. ·          The complexes are found in in Mukuru-Kaiyaba and in Kibagare off the Nairobi-Nakuru road, Kibera, Korogocho, Mathare and other areas.    Many dreams, it is said, are dreamed on the toilet. Now, for some residents of informal settlements in Nairobi, the toilet is making their dreams come true. “Napenda choo” (I love the toilet), reads one of the posters in a toilet in Mukuru-Kaiyaba slum. But the toilets described in the poster

Bio-centres turning human waste into electricity prove that feces is the ultimate source of renewable energy. Biocentres in Kibera have collected 60,000kg of poo, turning it into biogas. They call them “flying toilets” – the bags of human poo that are thrown out of the windows of the thousands of small shacks that make up Nairobi’s slums. The largest of Nairobi’s informal settlements is Kibera, just three miles from the city centre. An estimated one million people live there, and toilet facilities are scarce. The bare earth streets are carved with gullies: equal parts open sewer and rubbish dump. The nearest toilet for most people is a hole they have dug in a bare patch of ground at the back of their shack. But Josiah Omotto, a managing trustee of the  Umande trust , has high ambitions: he wants Nairobi to become an open defecation-free city. It’s a big challenge to set for yourself. “If open defecation was banned in Nairobi today, every member of the informal settlements