More than 40 participants including researchers, academicians as well as field motivators/workers attended the workshop-cum-training programme. The programme promoted interaction between participants that led to enhanced knowledge exchange between the participants.
The session conducted by Mr Suneel Rajavaram, an expert trainer from CAWST (Canada), was targeted on field motivators/workers. He briefed the participants about WASH and its importance for improving health and hygiene among the community. Participants learned about different approaches that should be adopted in raising awareness of communities on WASH and HWTS through role-plays, diagrams and charts and case studies. Mr Rajavaram emphasised the importance of ‘Home Visits’ by the filed staff to maintain household records and conducted a practical session on filling up periodical review and monitoring forms specially designed for evaluating WASH and HWTS. During the session, he emphasised on how to gather relevant and sufficient information from the households.
Mr Lalit Sharma, Director, Adaptive Technology, S M Sehgal Foundation introduced the Bio-Sand filters that were developed locally by SM Sehgal Foundation and was certified by Department of Science and Technology, Government of India. Filter is highly effective in filtering biological contaminants and heavy metals such as Iron, Arsenic and Manganese and can help in removing turbidity in water. It is cost effective and even can be used by the deprived communities living in the rural areas. Mr Sharma explained and demonstrated the filter installation and its technology.
Finally, a field visit was conducted to the village Jakhar in Samastipur District where SM Sehgal Foundation has been promoting practices of safe drinking water in partnership with IWP since 2016. Villages informed that out of 150 households in the village, almost 10 households have started using bio-sand filters and confident about the results. They requested SM Sehgal Foundation to further reduce the price of filters by allowing more people to get the benefit out of it.
The workshop motivated the field workers to conduct regular Monitoring and Evaluation and boosted their confidence to work on behaviour change of communities to address WASH issues in the water quality affected areas of Bihar.
This is the first programme conducted for this year from the several programmes planned under the IWP Core Programme activity - build resilience through promotion of safe drinking water in four selected flood prone districts of Bihar.