Friends of Londiani will celebrate its 10th birthday in 2012 - “10 years of community partnership.”

The Kenyan Ambassador to Ireland, Ms Catherine Muigai Mwangi, will formally open our new offices in Midleton Co. Cork on Saturday 14th January.

Friends of Londiani is an Irish NGO (non-governmental organisation) working with communities in Kenya since 2002. ‘Harambee’ is a Kenyan tradition of community self-help events and the word in Swahili literally means ‘all pull together’. FOL have adopted this name for their community projects, the first of which took place in 2002.

Since then there have been many more Harambee’s with volunteers from all over Ireland and some from overseas travelling to Kenya and working in partnership with the local communities to help improve their quality of life.

Over the past 10 years, programmes have been developed in the three key areas of health, education and clean water provision. Partnerships have evolved in Kenya with the local Ministries for Health, Education and Water & Sanitation. And in Ireland links have been established between Mayo General Hospital and Londiani District Hospital.

Volunteers who have worked with FOL over the past ten years, continue to support the organisation. Many have returned to Kenya on subsequent projects, some have gone on to studies in the area of overseas development and many stay involved in the development and implementation of the programmes. New volunteers are always welcome and the new office will provide a base and a presence for the public to find out more about FOL.

The Executive Director of Friends of Londiani in Ireland is Martin Ballantyne. Martin says “Opening an office in Midleton will help to establish our presence amongst Irish NGO’s and we hope that the public will become more aware of the work that we do”.

For further information please contact: Rose Hennessy, Friends of Londiani office

Telephone 021 4621748 or 086 8744612.