Violence in south-west Kenya has forced members of a student charity team to abandon their plans to carry out a six week project in the region.

Edinburgh Global Partnerships, a registered charity and society at the University of Edinburgh, had organised an expedition to Umala in Kenya’s Nyanza province, an area in which, according to the Foreign Office, “tensions remain high."

The eight volunteers were to work alongside a local charity to improve and sanitise the water to supply to over 300 families living in the village. But the trip, scheduled for June, was cancelled last week in a decision taken by the EGP committee in response to safety concerns.

Jennie Smyth, President of EGP said: “It would not have been responsible to send a team to Kenya in under the current circumstances. Due to the change in Foreign Office advice regarding travel to Nairobi, and the level of sporadic violence where the project is based, EGP had to reconsider the project.”

Violence erupted in Kenya following the disputed result of December elections, and has since spread along ethnic lines throughout much of the country, exposing old divisions over wealth, land and power.

Some 310,000 people have been displaced by the fighting whilst over 800 are thought to have been killed. The Foreign Office currently advises against “all but essential travel to Western and Nyanza Provinces.”

A further concern was raised in relation to insuring the volunteers.

Miss Smyth said: “As most insurance companies follow FCO guidelines on travel, EGP was concerned about whether volunteers would be able to get cover if travelling in Kenya.”

Clementine Hill O’Connor, one of the supervisors due to travel, said: “I think I speak for the whole team when I say that we are frustrated that the project cannot go ahead. It was a project we all felt was important, and felt passionately about. However, violence is ongoing in and around the area we would be working in so it would not be possible to work under current conditions.”

EGP also emphasised that its infrastructure-orientated project does not currently serve a priority issue in the area.

Miss Smyth said: “With the current instability and the growing numbers of displaced people in Kenya, to continue with a project whose focus is sanitation would have been inappropriate."

It is thought to be the first time an expedition has been cancelled in the organisation's 18 year history, and follows the withdrawal of Voluntary Service Overseas personnel from Kenya in January. The Umala based NGO with which the EGP team were due to work has expressed its full support for the decision to cancel the expedition, and links between the two organisations are to be maintained.

Miss O’Connor said, “If the situation has changed by next year there is every reason that the project will go ahead with a new team. We have built up a good relationship with the NGO.”

In the meantime a new project has been organised by members of the EGP Kenya team. Fundraising has begun for a mission to Kibirizi in north-west Tanzania, where additional classrooms will be constructed for a local secondary school.