WASH intervention
As many villages and districts of Bihar, India are now declaring themselves as ODF. Many other States across India are also verifying the same as per their respective mechanisms. The achievement of ODF involves to a great extent work of behavior change, sustenance of which requires concerted efforts by the community. Since 2017 Reach India Trust with support from UNICEF had been skillfully able to intervene across 10 districts of Bihar (2 districts namely Gaya, Nalanda in the first two phases) and Begusarai, Khagaria, East Champaran, West Champaran, Kaimur, Banka, Purnea and Supaul in the third phase to help DWSC in the preparation of block level ODF and SBCC plan. Block level plan has been generated in consultation with the concern officials and stakeholders and fed back into the system through regular review meeting with BDOs and District Magistrate in all 10 districts. Team has been working to capacitate the block officials/staff/frontline workers to effectively implement the ODF campaign.
All the 8 Districts in the third phase have been engaged with skilled Swachhagrahis to perform community triggering process to introduce desired behavior change with precision. The Nigrani Samiti (Vigilance Committee) is being strengthened to vigil the open defecation in their respective areas. All the trained Swachhagrahis has been closely monitoring the activities of the Nigrani Samiti (Vigilance Committee) through a prescribed format. The Block and District team has also been monitoring the activities under community approaches through a monitoring sheet on daily basis. All the key stakeholders and frontline workers of the intervening districts have been sensitized to play an active role in the District ODF campaign. Innovative communication tools are being designed to help mobilize the communities and the entire army of stakeholders on making their District Open Defecation Free within the shortest time possible.
In the 4th phase of the project Reach India have intervened in 5 ODF declared districts of Bihar namely Banka, Sheikhpura, Sitamarhi, Gaya, and Purnea to help the District Water and Sanitation committee to help in the preparation of block level ODF sustainability through regular use of Toilet and solid waste management. School hygiene has been added to in this part because it has been an unquestioned ‘essential element’ of water and sanitation.
Facts & Figures
UNICEF has been supporting Reach India Trust since 2017 to implement a project on Open defecation free in Bihar. This is the fourth phase of the project (June 2019 to December 2019) in which we have focused on Solid waste management, Wise water managements, soak pit construction, retrofitting issues and toilet coverage in schools and community. Reach has intervened across 69 panchayats of 5 blocks of 5 aspirational districts in Bihar. It is an action research model that also helps different stakeholders to learn and make ODF sustainable. As a part of the action research a survey had been aligned in the project during the month of June’19 in Schools and community, to gain an insight on the toilet coverage and usage of the toilet in the community, retrofitting issues, the current behavior of the HH regarding the 4 aspects- personal hygiene, safe storage and handling of water, hand washing with soap and usage of toilet and last but not the least to know the status of Solid Waste Management and current procedures for disposing the waste in the community and schools so that strategies could be developed and implemented to make ODF sustainable. Based on the results of the survey strategies were adopted in the next six months to mitigate the exiting problems related to proper WASH practices.
An End line survey was conducted to assess the change that has been brought by Reach India Trust team during intervention. The study helped Reach India Trust to assess the programme and cross examine the situation before and after intervention in the selected 5 districts/ 5 Blocks of Bihar.