Before Jal Jeevan Mission, the main rural water programme in this part of Uttar Pradesh was the Neer Nirmal Pariyojana, a rural water supply and sanitation project assisted by the World Bank, the Government of India and the Government of Uttar Pradesh. In Kushinagar district the Sansthan worked with village communities under this project, and the photographs in its printed activity record show what that work looked like on the ground.
The meetings
Four photographs from the record are reproduced on this website. One shows a women’s meeting at the Gram Panchayat level: a large group of women seated under a tree with the project banner behind them and the Sansthan’s facilitators standing at the front. The Sansthan’s own caption identifies this as a women’s meeting conducted by the organisation under the project. The others show community meetings held in a village courtyard, under trees and under a tent, in each case with the “Neer Nirmal Pariyojana” banner displayed at the front of the gathering.
Information material
The project also issued printed information material for households, and one such poster in the Sansthan’s record names the organisation as its supporting agency. The poster warns of encephalitis and lists the household practices the project promoted: not drinking water from shallow hand pumps, not letting water collect near the home, using a private toilet, and washing hands with soap before eating and after using the toilet.
Training and certification
Members of the Sansthan’s team completed the project’s course on rural drinking water safety and sanitation, held from 30 October to 1 November 2015, and a training-of-trainers course on the operation and maintenance of rural water supply and sanitation schemes, held from 3 to 5 December 2018, both at the Deendayal Upadhyaya State Institute of Rural Development, Lucknow. In June 2020 the District Development Officer, Kushinagar, issued an experience certificate confirming that the Sansthan had worked under the Neer Nirmal Pariyojana.
Scope
The activity record does not date the individual meetings or record the number of participants, so this article describes the photographs and the documents as they are and does not add figures or outcomes to them.
