Our NEMA partnership handles the regulatory side of tree planting on public land, but a meaningful share of what we do, waste collection scheduling, drainage maintenance, green space designation, sits with Nairobi County rather than a national regulator. Over the past year we've built a working relationship with the relevant county departments directly, and it's changed how several of our programmes actually run.
Waste collection coordination
One of the more practical outcomes has been closer coordination on waste collection timing around our clean-up days. Previously, waste we'd sorted and bagged at a clean-up site sometimes sat for several days before the next scheduled county collection, during which time it occasionally attracted fresh dumping on top of what we'd already cleared, effectively eroding part of the day's work before collection ever arrived. We now notify the relevant sub-county office ahead of larger clean-ups, and in most cases collection has been scheduled to follow within a day or two rather than waiting for the standard rotation.
This isn't a formal service level agreement, more an informal understanding built through repeated contact with the same officers over several clean-ups. It's held up reasonably well so far, though we're conscious that it depends partly on specific relationships rather than a documented process, and we're working toward something more formalised as our clean-up schedule continues to grow.
Input on green space planning
The second area of engagement is longer-term: providing resident-level input into how the county thinks about green space designation and protection in Embakasi East. Our advocacy work, like the case we've been building around the remaining public green space in Umoja, benefits from a direct line to the county planning office rather than routing every concern through a general complaints channel with no specific point of contact.
We've also been asked, on a couple of occasions, for input on where the county might prioritise tree planting as part of its own greening initiatives, drawing on the site survey data we've built up through our own planting programme. It's a modest form of influence, we're not setting county policy, but it means our on-the-ground knowledge of which streets and corridors most need attention is actually reaching the people making those decisions.
What this partnership doesn't do
It's worth being clear about the limits here too. This relationship doesn't give us funding, staffing, or any binding commitment from the county, it's a working relationship built on regular contact and mutual usefulness, not a formal partnership agreement with defined obligations on either side. That means it can be less reliable than a signed arrangement would be, dependent on individual officers' availability and priorities shifting over time, and we try to be realistic about that rather than overstating what it guarantees.
What it has done is reduce friction in areas where, previously, we were operating with no visibility into county plans or timelines at all, discovering only after the fact that a site we'd surveyed for planting was already earmarked for drainage work, for instance. Even an informal channel has been enough to catch a few of those conflicts before they cost us planted trees or wasted planning time.
Where we'd like this to go
Our longer-term hope is to formalise parts of this relationship, particularly the waste collection coordination, into something documented that doesn't depend entirely on personal relationships with specific officers who may eventually move roles. We're raising that possibility as the natural next step in conversations with the county, alongside our NEMA arrangement, as our clean-up and planting programmes continue to scale beyond what informal coordination alone can reliably support.
Residents who deal with county departments directly on waste or green space issues, and who run into the same coordination gaps we did, are welcome to share that experience with us through our Contact page; it helps us make a stronger case for a more formal arrangement going forward.
A specific example of how the relationship has helped
The clearest example of this partnership paying off came during planning for the Buruburu clean-up rotation. A routine check with the sub-county office ahead of the first scheduled visit revealed that one of the three priority sites we'd identified was already slated for a drainage upgrade within the following few months, work that would have undone any clean-up effort there almost immediately. Because we had a direct contact to check with rather than discovering this after the fact, we adjusted the site priority for that rotation and avoided putting volunteer effort into a spot that was about to be dug up anyway.
That kind of catch is exactly what an informal but consistent relationship with county officers is meant to provide, information that would otherwise reach us too late to act on, surfaced early enough to actually change our planning. We've since made a pre-planting check with the relevant sub-county office a standard step for any new site joining our clean-up or planting rosters, not just an occasional precaution.