| Water and Environmental Sanitation
e-Newsletter Volume: 11 Month: February 2008
News from Secretariat | News from Members | Press Releases | Publications | Events | Vacancies
Regional Workshop on Ecological Sanitation
A South Asia regional workshop on Ecological Sanitation was organized jointly by CAP-Net, Arghyam, SEI and WES-Net during 15-17th February 2008 in Bangalore. The workshop was attended by resource persons and participants from various South Asian countries. The workshop has helped in increasing awareness on this emerging concept across a large number of professionals from the region. Participants also identified various issues, including policy level issues that hinder effective promotion of this concept. Participants from India pointed out aspects such as; legal aspects in promoting Ecosan in the light of the manual scavenging act, inclusion of Ecosan as an option in the sanitation policy, the need for more research work on reuse of urine and compost for agriculture, developing viable market options for reuse urine and compost, etc., The outcomes of the workshop will be shared with Government and other sector players to address the issues identified.
WES-Net Core Group Meeting
Two core group meetings (20th December, 2007 and 21st February, 2008) were organized to discuss various activities being taken up by WES-Net and its member organizations. In the second meeting, discussions to develop a long term business plan were held as WES-Net is becoming a registered network. The business plan will include activity plan along with detailed budget for both activities to be taken up at the secretariat and by the member organizations which manage certain activities on behalf of the network.
Advisory Service
WES-Net and Arghyam have entered into a three year agreement to manage the "Advisory Service" being provided through India Water Portal. So far, over 150 queries from general public and professionals have been handled through the service. WES-Net seeks its members to share their experience and knowledge to make this service effective to address water and sanitation issues being faced at various levels across the country.
Research Coordination
WaterAid is compiling the research details collected and is in the process of organizing the research coordination workshop. During the workshop, a half day event on WASH campaign being promoted by WaterAid and the WES-Net's annual general body meeting will also be held.
Photo Contest
To commemorate the "International Year of Sanitation - 2008'', WES-Net India and some of its constituent member organizations, UNICEF, Water Aid and Plan India with the support of Department for Drinking Water Supply, Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India, is organizing a photo-contest titled "Clean India Photo-Contest 2008" to promote mass awareness and also raise the profile of sanitation among the general public, professionals and policy makers through the mainstream media by involving photographers and child photographers. To be eligible to take part in the contest, all a photographer is required to do is to publish photographs along with captions relating to below given sanitation themes in the newspapers and magazines during a period of one week, starting from the world water day which will be observed on 20th March this year, (i.e. 20th - 27th March 2008).
Visibility Materials
WES-Net with the support of key sector agencies developed annual planner and desk top calendar on sanitation themes to promote awareness during the International Year of Sanitation. These materials have been distributed to members and key agencies working in the sector including the Government.
Mr. Ranjan Kumar Singh has joined WES-Net secretariat as "Web Administrator" from January 2008. He will be managing the WES-Net website and other coordination functions at the secretariat.
Staff Changes
News from Members
Eco Edge 2 Conference (From DDWS, GoI, New Delhi)
In the recently held Eco Edge 2 conference in Melbourne, two important prescriptions of Sri. Santha Sheela Nair, Secretary, Department of Drinking Water Supply, GoI, to ensure safe water supply and sanitation across the globe was well received. First, she expressed that people must start harvesting their own rainwater rather than relying exclusively on town supply to ensure social and environmental sustainability. According to her, other means of water supply often fail to safe guard the above aspects. Second, she reiterated the need for adopting responsible sanitation systems in the light of problems already being faced across the globe due to climate change. According to her, it is important to judiciously use water for flushing the toilets and this can be achieved through use of ecological sanitation practices which is based on the principle of nutrient and water recycling.
Read More: http://tinyurl.com/36gert
Waterless Urinals (From Prakash Kumar, UNICEF-SEI, New Delhi)
Waterless urinals do not use water for flushing urine like the conventional urinals. Urine, which has high NPK content, is diverted to a storage tank and used as fertilizer for crops. Various types of traps and other arrangements can be fitted to the urinals to make waterless urinals smell free to the users. Waterless urinals only require minimal cleaning routines like the conventional water flush urinals. Waterless urinals are increasingly being used in many countries due the advantages it offers such as saving of water, reuse of urine as fertilizer and reduce load on waste water treatment plants. The system approximately saves between 56,800 litres to 170,000 litres of water per urinal per year which is used by a conventional for flushing urine, apart from resulting in high energy reduction for provision of water to urinals, functioning of electronic gadgets and for the subsequent treatment of sewage generated. If waterless urinals are promoted wisely in the modern infrastructure facilities such as Airports, Hotels, etc., exorbitant amount of cost incurred towards supply of large quantity of water, fixing expensive plumbing equipments and electronic gadgets can be avoided. If urine is collected and reused for fertilizing the crops, farmers in rural areas will stand to gain while preventing degradation of water bodies as well.
Read More: http://tinyurl.com/2luhk5
Potential for Solar Stills to Produce Potable Water (From S N Srinivas, Vijay Bhat and Y Nagaraju, TERI, Bangalore)
It is estimated a over 1,62,000 of the total 5,75,000 villages in India face problems of brackish or contaminated water. Nalgonda technique, activated alumina and bone charcoal methods introduced in the past have been only pilots, and these have not been able to sustain and multiply due to various reasons. The advanced technologies such as Multi-stage Flash Desalination (MSFD), Multi Effect Distillation (MED) integrated with Vapour Compression, Reverse Osmosis (RO) appear to be feasible in large scale and their sophistication and investment costs limit their application on a wider scale, especially to deserving poor communities. Identifying an opportunity for a robust solar based device, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) with support from Thames Water, London and SIJ got involved in adapting this technology to India. Multi-stage solar still is a simple technology that purifies saline/brackish water. Solar collectors use sun rays to heat raw water and the stainless steel stills distills the water to remove salt and other impurities. The solar still has the various advantages over other technologies of water purification as it; i) operates through the sun's energy which is renewable, ii) there are no moving parts and hence reliable, iii) removes all the chemical impurities such as Fluoride, Nitrate etc. which other technologies won't remove, iv) very low operating cost v) no chemicals are involved, hence zero maintenance.
Read More: http://tinyurl.com/3xzh8h
Guardian MFI's strategy in achieving sanitation (From Paul Sathianathan, Guardian, Trichy)
Gramalaya Urban and Rural Development Initiatives and Network (GUARDIAN) was established by Gramalaya, an NGO working on water and sanitation in Tiruchirappalli District, to promote exclusive credit facilities for water and sanitation activities. Different financial mechanisms tested by Gramalaya in the past to address financial accessibility of water and sanitation services in rural villages with the active involvement of SHGs were encouraging. Gramalaya, which has promoted over 2500 women self help groups, imparts training on water and sanitation, hygiene practices, solid waste management, water quality and monitoring, environmental management, water sources management, masonry training, etc., to these members. As other institutions who are engaged in micro finance are reluctant to lend money for poor families to obtaining drinking water connections and household toilets, this initiative is expected to fill the important gap of addressing the requirements of the poor families.
Read More: http://tinyurl.com/2nx33w
Sanitary Napkins Reach Rural Women (From Maria Fernandez, WaterAid, Bhopal)
In a revolutionary change, adolescent girls in the rural areas are involved in making sanitary napkins scientifically at low-cost for their personal use as well as for local distribution which is a very rare sight in India. WaterAid, Bhopal organized a two days workshop on Management of Menstrual Hygiene in order to develop group of Trainers. During the workshop, participants shared many unhygienic practices followed by women such as washing of used menses cloth in unclean latrines and drying them in dark places so that no one can sees them and avoiding urination during menstruation. Also, they shared that tribal women are made to stay in separate huts during menstruation periods, and in some locations women sit over small pits dugout pits in these designated huts and cover it after they use. Such practices often leads to problems such as white discharge, urinary tract infection, boils and itching, but instead of visiting medical practitioners they often seek the help of witchcraft for remedies. The trainees were taught to make sanitary napkins apart from safe practices to be followed. Some of the partners have started to provide raw materials to the trainees, including cotton mixed with chemicals, tissue paper, gauze and small units to manufacture the napkins. Each piece costs about Rs. 1.20. This programme is successfully implemented in many areas and the spread effect is being witnessed in these areas already.
WASTE MANAGEMENT (From Colonel B K Kailash, New Delhi)
Systematic disposal of domestic waste often finds resistance from people who are used to the conventional disposal of solid waste. As of now, different pockets/Sectors have their own garbage collection/disposal system with fragmented pecuniary advantages to RWAs/petty contractors. Therefore, changing the system in these areas will attract a lot of resistance/hostilities. So they can be kept untouched for the subsequent phases. A model project could be started with new Sectors including the ones under part occupation as also the societies/pockets that support the new concept without any prejudice to others. Garbage can be collected in collection points near the sectors and transported by private operators or NGOs through suitable fabricated mechanical transport to a central segregation and disposal point located away from the city. Payments to the operators can be based on either volume or weight basis. The garbage collected at the central location can be segregated and disposed safely. Once the project takes the desired shape, advocacy should be undertaken to involve older areas by affecting the change in a non perceivable slow deviation that shall be naturally adopted for obvious visible advantage(s). An important aspect of any social project is its self sustainability so that the project should not only be commercially viable but also be replicable to augment the scope with time. The project of the kind under discussion can be an attractive venture for the right entrepreneur being not only a profit centre but also mass employment initiator.
Read More: http://tinyurl.com/3adxhk
Improving Hygiene and Sanitation - A Novel Experiment (From Archana Chowdhury & Anjali Godyal, Sehgal Foundation, Gurgaon)
Jyotisar, a small village in Kurukshetra district of Haryana, is non-descript unless one takes into account of its historical significance - the birthplace of 'Gita'. Jyotisar scores low on account of poor hygiene and sanitation. Sehgal foundation has been handed over the responsibility of developing it into a tourist's delight spiritually and economically under the aegis of the UNDP - GoI Endogenous Rural Tourism Project. Initially, when the work on health started- especially hygiene & sanitation, the Community Health Volunteers regularly interacted with the community especially women. However, when it was found that the going was slow, adopting the well-established and highly effective method of rural communication - that of 'Nukkad Nataks' or 'Street Plays' paid off.
Read More: http://tinyurl.com/33hww8
Neer Jaal - Holistic Water Resource Management System (From Syed Kazi, Digital Empowerment Foundation, New Delhi)
"Neer Jaal" is an Information Communication Technology enabled water resource management system for grassroots communities. It is about collation of ground water related content and information and management of water resources with the available information. The Neerjaal software facilitates generating, storing and making public the water related information in a village. The core objective of Neerjaal is to contribute towards managing scarce water resources across communities in India. The idea behind the launch of Neer Jaal goes back to ground water management practices being followed in villages around Tilonia in Ajmer District of Rajasthan. DEF has partnered with Barefoot College in facilitating water resource management for the local communities across India. The upcoming efforts are towards is to encourage and facilitate bringing up bottom up information and content on water resources across the length and breadth of the country and make the collated and localized information web enabled for further usage and dissemination. Neer Jaal is aimed to bring bottom up information about various aspects of water and life dependent on it.
Read More: http://tinyurl.com/33l69l
Life Straw Family Water Purifier (Date: 11/03/08 Source: Raju Antony, Vestergaard)
The Switzerland-based Vestergaard Frandsen has the launch of a low cost water purifier LifeStraw Family, which would be priced at around Rs 800 in India. The purifier has been designed mainly for the developing world to provide safe and healthy drinking water.
Read More: http://www.wesnetindia.org/fileadmin/attachments/brochures/lifestraw-brochure-21-02-08.pdf
International Women's Day: Adolescent girls release menstrual hygiene management booklet (Date: 08/03/08 Source: UNICEF)
In a function marking the International Women's Day and the International Year of Sanitation, young adolescent girls and women from villages of Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh released a guidance booklet developed by DDWS, GoI and UNICEF on menstrual hygiene management and a short film on the same in New Delhi today. For more information, please contact UNICEF, New Delhi.
Read More: http://www.solutionexchange-un.net.in/gender/cr/res11030801.pdf
WSSCC - Global Sanitation Fund (Date: 14/03/08 Source: WSSCC)
WSSCC has lunched the Global Sanitation Fund to help large numbers of poor people to attain safe and sustainable sanitation services and adopt good hygiene practices. The Global Sanitation Fund is a single pooled fund open to contribution from any source including governments, foundations, private sector and individuals.
Read More: http://www.wsscc.org/en/what-we-do/global-sanitation-fund/index.htm
Publications
Play with Water (Source: Play with Water)
This website contains steps using which Ecological Engineering can be introduced to Primary Schools to Increase Interest and Understanding of Natural Sciences.
Read More: http://www.play-with-water.ch/project.cfm
Towards Effective Programming for WASH in Schools (Source: IRC)
This manual deals with school water, sanitation and hygiene education. It describes many of the elements needed for scaling up programmes for water, sanitation and hygiene in schools while ensuring quality and sustainability. The manual is meant for government, UNICEF and other (I)NGO staff responsible for programming WASH in Schools.
Read More: http://www.irc.nl/content/download/128071/348559/file/TP%2048%20WASH%20Schools_07.pdf
Manual on "Artificial Recharge of Ground Water" (Source: India Water Portal)
The manual is the latest in a series of publications on recharge augmentation brought out by CGWB. The manual deals with various aspects of artificial recharge of ground water. Roof top rainwater harvesting techniques, which are particularly suitable for urban areas, have also been included and described in detail.
Read More: http://www.indiawaterportal.org/tt/gwm/courses/CGWB_GW_Recharge.pdf
Ecosan Curriculum CD-ROM - Now Available (Source: GTZ Ecosan Newsletter)
The "ecosan curriculum" was put together by seecon international GmbH and a number of partners. It includes a range of teaching tools, like ready-to-use power point presentations, background tutorials and a comprehensive collection of further reading material on ecological sanitation. Now the new version 2.2 is available. The ecosan curriculum can be ordered from the Ecosan Services Foundation against the handling charge of around 10 EUR for individuals or 100 EUR for its use in courses (each plus postage).
Read More: http://www.ecosanservices.org/page.php?id=978
CSE - "Wastewater Recycling Manual" (Source: CSE)
The practical book and film package on treating wastewater has been produced by CSE. is available . The book is the much-awaited second edition of our popular "Wastewater Recycling Manual". This would help households and institutions understand how to implement wastewater management. The book is priced at Rs.250/- only. CLEAN YOUR ACT is CSE's latest film on alternative ways to treat wastewater. The film is available in DVD (Rs.950/-) and VCD (Rs.750) formats. For ordering, email Vikaas Khanna at vikas@cseindia.org
Essential Environmental Health Standards in Health Care
This document provides guidance on essential environmental health standards required for health care in medium- and low-resource countries and support the development and implementation of national policies.
Read More: Click
Books on LFA and PRA (Source: Alok Guha, New Delhi)
Two books, Logical Framework Approach - Project, Planning, Management and Monitoring' and 'Participatory Rural Appraisal Revisited : Training Manual' has been written by Mr.Alok Guha to assist development professionals with these techniques.
Read More: http://tinyurl.com/3ajs6t
11th International Conference on Wetland Systems Technology for Water Pollution Control (Source: Wetland2008.org)
The conference jointly organized by IWA, Vikram University IEMPS and ICWST from the 01st to 07th November 2008 at Indore will review and evaluate research findings and management practices on use of constructed and natural wetlands for water pollution control, and aimed at improving dynamic processes, planning, operation, performance and economics of wetland systems.
Read More: http://www.wetland2008.org/SaveWater/
World Toilet Summit and Expo (Source: WTO)
The World Toilet Summit 2008 will be held in Macau from 4th - 6th November. Actors from the sanitation sector around the world will participate to discuss and draw action plans for promotion of adequate and sustainable sanitation systems. The Summit will also feature the World Toilet Expo which will showcase leading edge sanitation solutions for urban and rural sanitation industry.
Read More: http://www.worldtoilet.org/
SACOSAN-III, New Delhi (Source, DDWS, GoI)
The Third South Asian Conference on Sanitation (SACOSAN-III) is scheduled to be held from 18-21 November 2008.
Read More: http://ddws.nic.in/infosacosan/sacosan.htm
Safe Drinking Water in Rural Areas: Community Based Approaches (Source: WaterAid)
WaterAid India is organizing a national level workshop on "Safe Drinking Water in Rural Areas: Community Based Approaches" from 8th to 10th April, 2008 at New Delhi. Please contact, Dr.Indira Khurana, WaterAid at Indira@wateraidindia.org for more information.
Read More: Click
Vacancies
- Position: Project Engineer
Organization: Rainwater Club
Location: Bangalore
Apply: As soon as possible
Source: http://www.rainwaterclub.org/jobs.htm
- Position: Research Associate (Water Unit)
Organization: Centre for Science for Science and Environment (CSE)
Location: New Delhi
Apply: As soon as possible
Source: http://www.cseindia.org/joinus-index.htm
- Position: HRD Consultant-CCDU/TSC
Organization: Communication and Capacity Development Unit Assam
Location: Guwahati, Assam
Closing Date for Applications: March31, 2008
Source: DevNetJobsIndia.org
Please send your contributions & feedback on the Newsletters to;
WES-Net India
C/o Plan International (INDIA),
E-12, Kailash Colony,
New Delhi-110048
Phone: +91-11-46558484
Fax:+91-11-46558443
email: desk@wesnetindia.org
Website: www.wesnetindia.org
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