24th June 2015, Regional Director, Yoshinobu Fukasawa, at the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific (ROAP) based in Fukuoka, Japan arrived in Kathmandu to participate in the International Conference on Nepal’s Reconstruction 2015 slated for 25^th June, 2015. “We have to rebuild the hearts of people not only the houses” says Fukasawa at an interaction program with UN-Habitat Nepal country office team in Kathmandu. Appreciating the works done by Nepal country office, he mentioned that UN-Habitat hopes to make bigger contribution in achieving Nepal’s development goals. He further highlighted the need to keep the spirit up in order to realize the support to the grassroots communities. During the interaction program, Padma Sundar Joshi, Habitat Program Manager gave a brief overview of UN-Habitat’s initiatives in Nepal since its formal establishment in late eighties. Similarly, Sudha Shrestha highlighted post-earthquake initiatives on water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) issues while Santosh Shrestha mentioned about the temporary shelter initiatives.

During the meeting, Bhushan Tuladhar, Chief Technical Advisor South Asia Region thanked Fukasawa for the support and cooperation received from regional office and the headquarters of UN-Habitat in Nairobi for relief distribution and rehabilitation works following the earthquake. Apart from his participation at the conference, during his four-day visit to Nepal, he will hold meetings with high level government officials and partners, and also make field visits to see selected UN-Habitat supported initiatives on temporary shelter and WASH in the outskirts of Kathmandu Valley.