If you are visiting for the first time please click here to register yourself.

 

April 2010

             

By Sanskriti Menon and Avinash Madhale

 

---

The Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Programme in Pune was started in 2008 as a collaborative programme of the Kirloskar Foundation (KF) and CEE’s Urban Programme.

 

KF had been organizing a Clean and Beautiful School Competition since 1967, in accordance with the concern of Late Shri Shantanurao Kirloskar towards improving conditions of cleanliness and discipline locally and his zeal to make a difference. At the request of KF, a study was conducted by CEE in 2008 to assess the impacts of the competition. Based on the findings it was decided to evolve a programmatic approach to effect systemic improvements in the school water and sanitation scenario, especially in municipal body run schools in Pune.

 

For CEE this was part of its core mandate and programme strategy. In Pune, CEE is also working to develop a network of partnerships as part of the UNU-IAS-Regional Centre of Expertise (RCE) for Sustainable Urban Development. CEE is the secretariat for the RCE in Pune. The essence of the RCE is that various organizations can work together to use formal and non formal spaces of learning for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) within a mutually agreed region and sector.

 

 

1.      To facilitate improvements in water, sanitation and hygiene education and infrastructure in municipal schools, using a participatory approach

 

2.      To help evolve sustainable, appropriate operation and maintenance systems of Water Sanitation & Hygiene (WASH) facilities in schools

 

 

At the beginning of the programmatic work with the schools, a detailed base-line survey was undertaken of 256 municipal schools. The school data collection format used by Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan was adapted for the survey. The adaptation was necessary as the format seems to be made keeping in mind the rural school. Specifically, data related to water and sanitation infrastructure gets misreported since multiple schools exist in a single campus, sometimes during the same shift, as well as multiple shifts. Each school reports the same infrastructure which is actually common. The format was modified to capture the situation more accurately.

 

Some of the key findings are presented in Table 1.

 

Physical observations about WASH facilities revealed that several are of inappropriate construction and toilets have improper slopes. Discussions with Principals and Education Officers showed that they were not very familiar with the standard norms for wat-san infrastructure, nor was it a priority. At school level principals do acknowledge that the facilities are important for children and staff, but there is also a feeling that children are in the school only for 5 hrs and the principal’s attention is more focused on subject teaching as that is what gets monitored and reported. Overall, ‘quality education’ is equated with examination results.

 

In one of the interviews with the Ward Officer responsible for the operation and maintenance of WASH facilities said that they need to cover lot of area, most of the time they are fire-fighting depending on ‘urgency’ of work. School children do adjust with their conditions in school as they are from such a background were situation is not much different. School principals were blamed for not taking care of the WASH facilities.

 

 

 

 

A participatory approach was conceived of for a step by step improvement of not only the physical infrastructure but also the management protocols and to enhance awareness about personal hygiene amongst the school community.

 

A major effort has been made to engage with the school education dept at the municipal corporation, the ward offices and the engineers in-charge of repairs and maintenance.

 

The step by step approach is depicted in Table 1

 

 

The programme approach evolved by KF and CEE has several features:

1.   The WASH volunteers are Kirloskar Group employees

2.   Schools directly benefit from professional field-based WASH experience of volunteers

3.   Children acquire life skills of hygiene maintenance

4.   On-the-job capacity building of teachers and school administrators on O&M of WASH facilities

5.   Documentation and demonstration of processes and good practices

6.   Going beyond competition mode to building bonds between school and local community

Some of the major activities undertaken in the academic year 2009-10 are as follows:

 

The outbreak of swine-flu delayed the activities considerably and also put constraints on the time available to the school to run the WASH Club activities.

1.      Water Sanitation and Hygiene is not a priority for school and municipal administration and changing the mind sets and stereo types is a big challenge

2.      Much of the IEC material on water and sanitation infrastructure design and management pertains to the rural situation, which is somewhat different from the situation in Pune and possibly other urban areas; so for those involved in the programme, there is a lack of reference materials and documentation of experiences on the subject

3.      The officials and technical personnel supposed to be part of the school water and sanitation infrastructure provision and maintenance have limited knowledge about child-friendly and gender sensitive WASH facilities and designs in schools

4.      In several locations, the school premises have issues emanating from other urban problems: vandalism of wat-san infrastructure, parking of teachers’ vehicles in access areas, ad hoc construction and demolition of infrastructure without needs assessment, land-grabbing and encroachment on school lands due to high land prices, etc

5.      There is a lack of clarity about the administrative support systems from the municipal administration towards school water and sanitation provision

6.      The systems for complaints from schools to municipal corporation are faulty and confusing, leading to delay in the delivery of services related to WASH

 

Another challenge for CEE in the project was to work with a corporate group and use their staff as volunteers. This has been a new way of functioning. Some constraints were the availability of time with volunteers and their lack of experience of working with schools. However, volunteers brought in corporate management skills, ideas and professionalism

1.      A strong and sustained effort engaging multiple stakeholders is needed for school water and sanitation improvement in urban areas

2.      Infrastructure design, building codes for schools need to be reviewed to meet the current norms

3.      Capacity building and motivation of school managements as well as municipal administration is essential for improving the support to schools

4.      WASH related content needs to be integrated into school textbooks and teacher training

While some improvements have already taken place, a lot more needs to be done. Discussions are planned with the municipal authorities to place before the local decision-makers all findings of the work done so far. More importantly, the programme partners feel that there is a need to designate an official within the municipal authority who would facilitate the creation or streamlining of the systems within the schools, the school education dept and the ward offices to ensure adequate water and infrastructure and its maintenance in all the schools.

 

Shri Avinash Madhale

Programme Officer

CEE Central Regional Cell

A-10, Garden Estate

New D P Road, Aundh, Pune 411007

Email: avinash.madhale@ceeindia.org