SHARE – Request for proposals: The effects of poor sanitation on girls and women in India

Feb 21, 2013 – The SHARE Research Consortium is issuing a Request for Proposals (RFP) for research into the effects of poor sanitation on girls and women in India. Proposals must be led or co-led by an Indian research institution and must address at least one of the following questions:

• Psycho-social stress resulting from violence experienced by women in the course of using sanitation facilities or practicing open defecation.
• Operational research into menstrual hygiene management or determining the link between menstrual hygiene and infections.
• The practice of limiting, postponing or reducing food and liquid intake to control the urge to urinate or defecate: the prevalence of this behaviour and related health risks.

The deadline for submission of proposal is 17:00 GMT on 15 March 2013.

• For full details please refer to the RFP document

Email: aurelie.jeandron@lshtm.ac.uk

An interview with Babar Kabir on the BRAC WASH programme

Reblogged from WASH news Asia & Pacific:

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Babar Kabir is the Senior Director at BRAC and programme director of the BRAC WASH programme. He talks to IRC's Joep Verhagen about this huge programme, the importance of the Village WASH Committee, and emerging sanitation innovations.

Could you briefly describe the BRAC WASH programme? 

BRAC WASH II aims for a sustained change —a measurable leap – in personal/family hygiene, sanitation and water safety for all. 

Read more… 1,229 more words

Covering 55 million people, half the population of Bangladesh, the BRAC WASH programme must be one of the largest sanitation programmes, if not the largest sanitation programme, in the world today.

Making sense of sanitation monitoring in Bangladesh

Reblogged from WASH news Asia & Pacific:

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Over the last few weeks and months, people at BRAC in Bangladesh and at IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre in The Netherlands have been working really, really hard to prepare for our first Monitoring and Learning workshop that will happen at the end of February. Exciting, and frankly, a bit daunting to complete the full circle of planning, implementation, monitoring and learning, and adaptation for the BRAC WASH programme that covers half of Bangladesh and seeks to provide sustainable sanitation and hygiene services to almost 55 million people.

Read more… 819 more words

Innovative monitoring tools such as the Qualitative Information System (QIS), sanitation ladders and SenseMaker® are being used in a programme that seeks to provide sustainable sanitation and hygiene services to almost 55 million people in Bangladesh.

Plagiarism flushes sanitation paper

Just when another German minister is forced to resign after being accused of plagiarism, two less well-known sanitation scientists have been put to shame for the same offence.

Two scientists from India’s Center for Sustainable Technologies have had their journal article retracted after the publisher, Elsevier, discovered they had plagiarised a Swedish research paper.

Raised latrines survive floods in Bangladesh

Low cost latrines constructed by the Chars Livelihoods Programme (CLP) in Bangladesh performed well in their first real flood test.

After the July 2012 floods, which also hit the CLP programme area in the districts of Jamalpur and Kurigram on the northern Jamuna, only 14% of the low cost latrines were destroyed or unusable. During the flooding, recipients continued to have access to sanitation.

Low cost latrines raised above flood levels. Photo: CLP

Households in CLP districts are raised on earthen plinths 60 cm above the highest known flood level. The Programme ensures access to clean water and sanitation by also raising water points and installing latrines on plinths.

A field tool for sanitation marketing surveys in Bangladesh

Consultant-led sanitation marketing surveys typically take months to produce a thick report with largely impractical recommendations.

The IRC International Water and Sanitation is developing a field tool that delivers, within just one week, a one-page overview matching sanitation supply and demand.

The tool, a sanitation marketing dashboard, was tested in two unions in one of the upazilas (sub-districts) covered by the BRAC WASH II programme.

Preliminary results revealed for instance that the quality of construction and hygiene promotion needed improvement.

An updated version of the tool will be used in six to nine representative upazilas in the BRAC WASH II programme.

For more information contact: Erick Baetings or Ingeborg Krukkert at IRC.

IRC-BRAC WASH II
Sanitation Demand and Supply Study

Source: Erick Baetings, IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre

SACOSAN-V – South Asian Conference on Sanitation, 11-13 November 2013, Kathmandu, Nepal

Heads of delegation from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka will join other delegates from government, UN agencies, civil society and private sector to once again discuss the “biggest sanitation challenge in the world”.

There are around 700 million South Asians who still defecate in the open. At SACOSAN-IV held in April 2011 in Sri Lanka, South Asian ministers promised to set up a national body in each country to “coordinate sanitation and hygiene, involving all stakeholders”.

SACOSAN-V is being organised by the Nepal Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD), Department of Water Supply and Sewerage (DWSS).

The SACOSAN-V theme is: ”Sanitation for All : All for Sanitation”.

Programme outline: Public Opening (10 November), Meeting of Ministers, Technical focus sessions, Plenaries, Public sessions, Panel discussions, Declarations, Exhibitions, Field visits (14 November).

Session topics (Download Concept Paper):

Topic	Lead Country	Partner involved
Sanitation and Health	Afghanistan	UNICEF
Community Wide Sanitation and Sustainability	Bangladesh	WSP
School Sanitation	Bhutan	WHO
Reaching the Unreached	India	FANSA
Sanitation Technology and Marketing	Maldives	WHO
Media Advocacy and Sanitation	Nepal	WaterAid
Urban Sanitation	Pakistan	WaterAid
Knowledge Management and Networking	Sri Lanka	UNICEF

For more information go to: www.sacosanv.gov.np

ICDDRB – Update on WASH and hygiene practices

Study reveals impact of combined water and sanitation interventions in rural Bangladesh | Source: ICDDRB, Jan 25, 2013

A study by icddr,b researchers has demonstrated how combined water and sanitation interventions can significantly improve basic hygiene practices in rural communities. This and other encouraging findings were shared during a seminar organised by icddr,b on Thursday, 24th January 2013 in the Sasakawa Auditorium.

Findings of the pilot study carried out in low income communities in central Bangladesh, where handwashing with soap and treating drinking water were not commonly practiced, show that hand washing with soap jumped from 17 to 75% after rural communities received a combination of health messages and tailor-made hardware. 

Some of the specially built products distributed amongst the target groups were handwashing stations (large plastic containers with a tap), which they could use to store clean water and soap, enabling them to wash hands, custom built hoes to remove human and animal waste, potties for children, and products such as soapy water made with detergent and chlorine tablets.

Linking behaviour change to improved hygiene

Behavioural change communication was a key strategy of the pilot study, and demonstrated how an effective combination of activities, supporting materials and trained and motivated promoters can change people’s behaviour and eventually people’s lives. Young children and their mothers were the primary target audience during this trial, followed by fathers and caregivers of young children and then neighbouring households in the same compound and the larger community.

Renewed research call for low-cost sanitation technologies in Bangladesh [deadline18 Feb 2013]

IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre announces a renewed research call for:

Low-cost sanitation technologies for areas with high water tables

This call is part of the BRAC WASH II programme in which EUR 1.5 million will be used for innovative research, tendered to consortia of leading European and Bangladeshi research organisations.

The planned duration of the research project will be 18 months.

The anticipated cost of the project is EUR 325,000. In addition there is EUR 50,000 available for piloting. (Separate budget needs to be included for this).

Download the BRAC Call Applicants Guide

Download the Application form

Application forms should be sent to bracactionresearch@irc.nl

The deadline for submission of full proposal application forms is: 18 February 2013.

Future research calls will focus on low-cost water supply technologies; Geo-referenced database for monitoring; menstrual hygiene management; and saline intrusion.

Please do not send requests for information or applications to the Sanitation Updates blog.

Alive & Thrive – Reducing stunting through improved feeding and handwashing

Handwashing with soap before handling a child’s food is critical to child health and nutrition. Alive & Thrive, the Institute of Public Health Nutrition, and the Department of Public Health Engineering launched a campaign in Bangladesh linking handwashing and adequate, appropriate, and safe complementary feeding. 

Materials include a summary of the handwashing initiative, an advocacy brief, TV spot, poster, job aid, and reminder sticker.

• View campaign materials