National Dissemination Meet on Enabling the Urban Poor to Strengthen Access to Sanitation
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National Dissemination Meet on Enabling the Urban Poor to Strengthen Access to Sanitation
National Dissemination Meet on: Presenting the Findings from the Evaluation Study of a Three-Year Intervention on Enabling the Urban Poor to Strengthen Access to Sanitation
The National Dissemination Meet held in Delhi, on February 27-28, 2017, enabled the Centre for Advocacy and Research (CFAR) to share and reflect collectively on the best practices that had emerged from a three year (2012-15) community-led urban sanitation intervention, in the cities of Delhi, Jaipur and Kolkata. The intervention, which was supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), was jointly implemented by the Centre for Advocacy and Research, and three Community Based Organizations (CBO) Mahila Pragati Manch, Daksh Samooah and Alor Disha.
The findings from the Evaluation Study Sanitation, Water and Hygiene: Strengthening Community Centered and Gender Responsive Provisioning, which was conducted by the Institute for Human Development (IHD) and disseminated during the two-day Meet, highlighted and identified the changes that had been witnessed at the community level. They included:
- Hugely enhanced awareness levels on WSH in the community which has motivated individuals and the community as a whole to ensure cleanliness in their homes and the settlement.
The effort of the Women’s Forum has gone a long way in making sanitation a people’s issue, with communities having a say in not only improving but also sustaining access to better services- Ms. Vimla, Founder member, Mahila Pragati Manch
- Main success story in Delhi is the construction, renovation and maintenance of public toilets with official support from DUSIB and a decline in open defecation from 20 to 5%.
The community decided that they would build their own household toilets and within three years 300 household toilets were constructed with the help of local masons.- Ms. Tabussum from Mahila Pragati Manch, Delhi
- Filing of complaints /demands for clean and adequate drinking water supplies; regular garbage collection; community management of street cleaning and other felt needs.
- In Jaipur, introduction of new technologies like dry two-pit latrines; construction of individual toilets and it eventually link up with Swachh Bharat Mission.
Ms. Maya Verma, from Jhalana Kunda, recalls with a great sense of achievement of how the community had fought its own battles against open defecation, gone in search for an appropriate model for household toilets, learnt about the twin-pit toilet technique and replicated it on scale. “It is only after 35 households had constructed twin-pit latrines that the government woke up to the possibility and declared Jhalana Kunda as a learning site for officials and service providers.”
- Women and girls have started discussing their menstrual and reproductive health problems with their mothers, at health camps and with programme teams.
- Families impose fewer restrictions on their daughters during their menstrual periods. (In Jaipur the proportion of women who did not allow their daughters to attend school has declined from 46 percent (baseline) to 16 percent (End line).
- In J P Colony cluster of Jaipur, an adolescent girls forum was formed to promote personal hygiene among women in the cluster.
- In Dakhin Kumrokhali and Stadiumpara clusters of a Kolkata slum, a women’s’ group named “Alor disha” was formed. CFAR with the help of this group started generating awareness about menstrual hygiene. The group also organized Dance Movement Therapy on health-related issues and provided them with proper knowledge on biological changes relating to women’s bodies.
Sabina Mondal from Alor Disha, Kolkata, speaks of her transformation from being a survivor of violence to agent of change in Rajpur-Sonapur Municipality. “In our settlements today we can say with great pride and confidence that the community has taken full ownership of the issue of sanitation and linked it with both health and hygiene; not just in our homes but also in the anganwadi and school.”
Over two hundred representatives from NGOs and CBOs-Mahila Pragati Manch, Daksh Samooah and Alor Disha- came together for the Dissemination Meet. They included 30 representatives from Jaipur, Kota and Jodhpur, 30 from Delhi, 20 from Bhubaneswar and 35 from Kolkata.