Awareness generation on WASH in Fisher Community – SWISS RED CROSS

The water sanitation and hygiene status of the fisher group community was very poor when the organization first started its program in 1999. The community faced lots of challenges in terms of clean drinking water, toilet facility and better hygiene practices, as there were no toilets present in the community. At the same time the availability of safe drinking water was also not adequate and present in the vicinity which led the women folk walk miles to fetch the required amount of water for drinking and other household purposes. This ultimately took a lot of their time and energy which otherwise they would have used in income generating activities. The organization realised this issue and started the initiative with the help of its supporting partner.  This program was initiated in 10 village of Andhrathari block. Under this initiative following activities were undertaken:

-Construction of 50 community toilet in selected 10 villages.

-Construction of 50 community handpumps for safe water availability.

-Generating awareness on hand wash practices

-generating awareness on ill effects of open defecation

-generating awareness on practices of using safe clean drinking water

-generating awareness on keeping their environment clean by not accumulating dirt and garbage around their household.

-generating awareness on the govt schemes available for toilet construction and handpump construction and how it can be accessed.

Promoting Safe Drinking Water and Hygiene Facilities in Rural areas – WATER AID

Water Aid India realised the issue of poor Sanitation conditions of the rural community and came on board with Sakhi to tackle the challenges not just at the grassroot level but also at district administrative level through its overall implementation approach.

The project mainly aimed at Improving the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene facilities of the community. The project was implemented in 60 villages of 29 panchayats under 5 blocks of Madhubani namely Jhanjharpur, ANDHRATHARI, BABUBARHI,KHAJAULI, MADHEPUR,LAKHNAUR. Some of these areas were also high Flood prone areas. And so the challenges varied from one location to another. The project focussed at various issues of the WASH components and undertook following activities:

-Facilitating the process of Building individual toilets by conducting various trigerring sessions within community.

-accelerated the process of toilet construction by connecting people to government schemes.

-Provided support to the district administration in collecting user’s certificate and updating MIS of the beneficiaries.

-created a team of  Sanitation champions and volunteers across villages

-Creating awareness regarding the disadvantages n harmful effects of open defecation

–  Creating awareness regarding safe and clean drinking water.

– Providing access to improved water facility by installing water purification systems in the flood prone areas.

– Creating awareness on sludge and waste manangement

-Creating awareness on safe disposal and treatment of waste/grey water.

– creating awareness on menstrual health and hygiene management

-creating awareness on safe disposal of sanitary napkins

– capacity building of the community and panchayat level institutions/PRI

– capacity building of district level government institutions.

-capacity building and orientation of the masons on techniques of different toilet construction methods and pits/tanks.

-formation and orientation of VWSC on their role and responsibilities in their respective villages.

-creating awareness through school sanitation programs

-forming Baal manch/meena manch at the school level for awareness generation programs.

-creating awareness on hand washing practices

-creating awareness through NUkkad nataks, Rallies, awareness meetings in the schools and community.

-constructing toilet for disabled section of the society by mobilising government funds.

The program reached out to more than 50,000 beneficiary at the grassroot level.

Promoting sustainable Sanitation in Rural India – Global Sanitation Fund

PSSIRI is one of the highly ambitious and challenging 04 years assignments of the organization supported by Global Sanitation Fund (GSF) through NRMC india. The core component of the project is to promote awareness level of community to adopt feasible Sanitation behavior in sustainable basis. The guiding principle of the projects is process of facilitation for Open defecation free village development to be led by the community itself.

The objectives of the project are:

1) To contribute to sustainable sanitation use and hygiene behaviour at scale.

2) To develop capacity for sustainable promotion of improved sanitation and hygiene and

3) To promote culture of continuous learning among all stakeholder with having its major program components as Support for enabling Access and effective use of improved sanitation facility and hygiene promotion and Support for sanitation marketing and use of media.

Community led sanitation exercise acts as an effective tool of community mobilization towards creating massive momentum for adoption of feasible sanitation behavior change in course of implementation of the project at Jhanjharpur block. Organization successfully harness model ODF villages developed under project for demonstration to community for replication and concerned government department for mobilization of resources for permanent ODF villages.

 “Shame,disgust and health based BCC model” act as driving force to inspirecommunity to assign ownership in sanitation project. Organization successfully organized highly qualitative CLTS (community lead total sanitation) exercises in various villages and created enabling environment by mobilizing community, through several school rallies, Nukkad Nattak, Wall painting in all the operational Panchayats in tandem with capacity building exercises for VWSC members , PPRIs members and CBOs members to obtain mileage to achieve desired result of the Project .

At the end of the project organization was able to achieve ODF status to Jhanjharpur.

Promoting safe hygiene practices in Disaster affected areas – Oxfam

When disaster hits it brings with itself a continued series of challenges and threats for the community which becomes rather life threatening most of the times. Flood is one such disaster which unfortunately affects North Bihar very frequently and derails life at large. Amidst every other problem, the issue of clean drinking water and Safe toilet facilities is one of them. Sakhi in partnership with Oxfam realized the issue and took to the challenge in Madhepur block of Madhubani.

The major activities that were undertaken are:

• Construction of high raised handpumps in selected villages
• Construction of mobile toilets
• Distribution of sanitary napkins to the adolescents.
• Providing sanitary kits to the households.