A five days Designer Training -on Sustainable Housing has accomplished in Bhedetar, Dharan. The program was jointly organized by Ministry of Federal Affairs and Local Development (MoFALD),  Dharan Municipality and UN-Habitat on October 14 – 18, 2014. . Thirty designers from Dharan municipality, Institute of Engineering (IoE), Dharan, local consultancies as well as Itahari Municipality and Dhankuta Municipality   participated in the training programme. The main aim of training was to build the capacity of local designers (engineers and architects) and municipality staffs on sustainable building design and to guide them towards sustainable housing approach, services and technologies. The training was facilitated by Dr. Santosh Shrestha, Sustainable Housing Analyst, UN-Habitat and Er. Suraj Shrestha, Senior Engineer, Dharan Municipality. Prof Dr. Premnath Maskey and Associate Prof Dr. Sushil K. Bajracharya from IoE were main resource person for the training. The training programme was divided into different session as per Green Homes components – Passive Solar Design, Sustainable Construction Materials, and Energy Efficiency, Water conservation and Waste management as well as a field visit.  On the fifth day, a field visit was organized to observe Green School at Rajghat Morang and waste water treatment plant in Biratnagar Eye Hospital Biratnagar. Speaking at the inauguration ceremony of the program, Mr. Tika Datta Rai, Chief executive officer, Dharan Municipality mentioned that Green Homes can be the best and effective option to reduce environmental pollution, which is one of the major challenges and issues of the world. He further highlighted that Dharan Municipality is going to implement green homes with support of UN-Habitat and EU and this training would be beneficial to implement this new concept in Dharan. Likewise, Dharan Municipality Planning section chief, Er. Suraj Shrestha mentioned that Dharan Municipality has been promoting for earthquake resistant building construction and from now we will promote green homes together. He announced that municipality had recently included the green homes components in the building by-laws and annual plan and approved incentive mechanism of 50 % tax reduction for promoting sustainable housing in Dharan. Mr. Keshav Ghimire, President of Federation of Nepalese Journalist, (FNJ) Sunsari Branch, urged municipality  and stakeholders to bring and implement  effective and encouraging program. This training is one of the programs of Green homes project. The project programs are implementing by UN-HABITAT and Partners agency in Pokhara, Dharan and Lalitpur as a pilot project funded by the European Union. Some photos of training