Training Programme on Urban Rainwater Harvesting System at Kigali, Rwanda

Venue: Marasa Umubano Hotel, Kigali, Rwanda

Date: 23-25 January 2018

Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), India in collaboration with WaterAid Rwanda, conducted a three day training programme on Urban Rainwater Harvesting (RWH) system from January 23-25, 2018. The purpose of the training was to develop a cadre of practitioners with knowledge, skills and attitude for mainstreaming sustainable and affordable rainwater harvesting (RWH) in Rwanda. The programme included diverse group of 32 state and non-state practitioners (engineers, consultants, planners, academicians and researchers). 

The training programme started with brief inaugural by Mr. Maurice Kwizera, Country Director, WaterAid Rwanda along with Dr. Suresh Rohilla, Director of Water Unit, CSE, and Mr. Fidele Nteziyaremye, WATSAN Secretariat Coordinator, Ministry of Infrastructure, Rwanda. During the inaugural, Mr. Kwizera stated the aim of the training is to gain knowledge and share experience to create a community of practitioners and to get something tangible for proper RWH. Dr. Rohilla in his welcome address stated that “water is everybody’s business – realize the value of every drop of water”. Further he also stated the potential RWH holds in augmentation of water availability by using public spaces to recharge groundwater or store and reuse the rainwater. Mr. Nteziyaremye said that Ministry of Infrastructure fully supports the concept of RWH and optimistic that the knowledge gained by the participants during the training will be helpful in their work. Further, Dr Mahreen Matto, Programme Manager of Water Unit, CSE talked about Planning for Water Sensitive Settlements which emphasis on a holistic approach taking rainwater, stormwater and reuse and recycle of wastewater together at different scales in order to promote sustainable urban growth. Later Ms. Shivali Jainer, Programme Officer, CSE focused on planning, designing and implementation strategies of RWH supported by best management practices, documentary on ‘Rain Catchers’ aiming at community participation. This was concluded with a brain storming exercise on data collection. The day ended with extensive session on planning and designing of RWH system involving discussions and interactions.

Day 2 started with session on watershed analysis followed by understanding macro RWH structures such as Check Dam and Contour Bund, the session was delivered by Mr. Mritunjay Kumar, Programme Officer, CSE. Later he talked about the role and importance of community participation in implementation and management of RWH systems which was supported by an exercise named “Continuum Walk” which explored the role and intentions of different stakeholders during development and implementation of the RWH system. Further, Dr. Mahreen Matto discussed about the sustainability of RWH structures in terms of selection of suitable filters, operation & maintenance and assessing economic feasibility of RWH systems. The last session of the day gave details about the planning and designing of Sustainable Urban Drainage System (SuDS) where Ms. Shivali Jainer discussed about managing storm water aiming to reduce velocity and peak flow and improve quality of urban runoff in order to move away from typical victorial drainage design.  

The last day started with ‘Do It Yourself’ exercise. In this session participants received hands on experience in planning and designing of RWH system at different scale and gained better understanding of managing rainwater in decentralized way and further presented their design and planning of RWH systems. The outline of presentation included data analysis and demand estimates, planning and designing of RWH structures at site, costing of the complete system and pay back analysis. The presentations were made using Microsoft excel, power point. A representative from group gave presentations. This was followed by feedback session to understand about the relevance of the entire training programme. Participants appreciated the content, methodology of the training and expressed their interest to implement projects on sustainable water management within their domain. Thereafter certificates were distributed among the participants. The second half of Day 3 was focused on the site visit to model village in Rweru Sector of Bugesera District, where the rainwater from rooftop of houses is conveyed into storage tanks (individual or collective) through well planned gutter system. In the first phase 104 houses have been built with roof area 84sqm. The participants interacted with community to understand working of implemented RWH structures.