Kuwaiti designs for refugees’ housing win contest
KUWAIT: Members of the three winning teams of Kuwait Office of Engineers without Borders (EWB) made a video call yesterday through satellite with a group of peers from the United Nations Office in Nairobi. During the video call, EWB-Kuwait team presented projects and designs of housing units for a refugee camp in Nairobi. In this regard, Director of UN office Human Settlements Program (UN-Habitat) in Kuwait Amira Al-Hassan expressed her pride in the winning projects of Kuwaiti students in the Challenge contest, hoping these designs would be applied on the ground, contributing to solving the problems of sheltering refugees. She clarified that these projects presented by the winning teams involve innovations, pointing to the strong corporation between (UN-Habitat) and (EWB) in Kuwait.
Meanwhile, Founder and Director of EWBKuwait Zainab Qarashi said the conference, held at the UN office through satellite, created a great opportunity for teams’ members to contact with UN officials and present their projects. The call helped to know possibility of implementing these projects on the ground and benefiting from them in construction of sustainable housing units in the Dadaab refugee camps in Kenya, which includes about 245 refugees. EWB signed earlier a memorandum with (UN-Habitat) to expand ways of cooperation between the two sides to help youth reach a better future through sustainable development in cities where the projects will be executed in and outside Kuwait, Qarashi explained.
The call was attended by Director of UN office Human Settlements Program (UNHabitat) in Kuwait Amira Al-Hasan, Founder and chief of EWB-Kuwait Zainab Qarashi, Head of Energy Projects Group-EWB Yousef Al-Anjari, while on the other side of the Video call there was Deputy Regional Director of UN-Habitat Program Erfan Ali. The three Kuwaiti winning teams participated in the Challenge contest last October in London and were honored after presenting their winning projects at a meeting of one of the Committees of the World Federation of Engineering Organizations (WFEO).
As for the winning team, the first team ‘Engineers for Peace’ included Hanadi Al-Holi, Huda Al-Qahtani, Omaima Al-Fassam and Shibnam Mahmoudi. The second team ‘The Engineers Team’ included Nouf Al-Hamdan, Badria Al-Refaie, Nourah Al-Refaie, and Sarah Al-Awadhi, while the third team ‘The RB Team’ included Fatimah Al-Zalzalah, Marwa AlZalzalah, Kawther Baron, Ghaneema Al-Kandari and Aalaa Mubarak.