International Women’s Day in Asia: celebrating women in sanitation

In a new video, Mayadevi and Kaman (Nepal),  Toan and Thinh (VietNam) and  Tshering, Drukda, Tashi and Deschen (Bhutan) share stories about women’s participation, leadership and their changing roles in promoting sanitation and hygiene in  Nepal, Bhutan and Viet Nam.

The video is from SNV’s Sustainable Sanitation and Hygiene for All Programme (SSH4A), which has been implemented by local governments and partners in 17 districts across Nepal, Bhutan, Laos, Viet Nam and Cambodia since 2008. It aims to provide one million people with access to improved hygiene and sanitation facilities by the end of 2015. As the approach aims at addressing access to sanitation for all, addressing gender issues and inequalities is key.

SSH4A is a partnership between SNV, the Governments of the Netherlands, Nepal, Bhutan, Laos, Viet Nam and Cambodia in Asia and the IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre with support from AusAID and DFID.

Learn more about SSH4A at www.snvworld.org/node/3779 and www.irc.nl/ssh4a

In Bangladesh, IRC is supporting BRAC  to measure behavioural change in the   BRAC  WASH II programme. Christine Sijbesma of IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre and Mahjabeen Ahmed of the BRAC share their thoughts and experiences with monitoring sanitation and hygiene behaviour of women in the programme in a recent blog post [1].

The QIS monitoring system that is being used gives special attention to gender and sanitation. First because many of the indicators differentiate between women and men. Secondly because data collection for each sample is duplicated by a male and a female monitoring team.  Interestingly, preliminary results show that virtually all the male and female monitoring teams members gave the same scores for the gender indicators.

[1] Bangladeshi women catch up on sanitation, IRC, 08 March 2013

Water shortages impede hygiene for Nepalese women

Dec 13, 2011, By Teresa Rehman, Alertnet

KATHMANDU, Nepal (AlertNet) – On the fourth day of her menstrual cycle, Belkumari Paudiyal hikes for more than 20 minutes to the river below her village. She ties a petticoat round her chest and takes a cleansing bath, which signals that her life will resume as normal.

A woman washes clothes at Baidam Lake in Pokhara province, south west of Kathmandu, March 16, 2009. REUTERS/Chaiwat Subprasom

When Paudiyal, 37, is menstruating, custom demands that she be isolated from her family, and refrain from entering the kitchen, touching food or offering prayers.

“I prefer to walk down to the river as it provides some privacy to clean myself,” says Paudiyal, a resident of Paudiyalthok in Nepal’s picturesque Panchkhal Valley. “Otherwise there is the common tap which has no enclosed space. Trekking all the way to the river is the only solution.”

Music for Life 2011 – “We do give a shit”

This month, Belgian radio station Studio Brussel is partnering with the Red Cross to raise money for WASH projects in Nepal.

Traditionally, the radio station’s annual “Music for Life” Christmas fundraiser focuses on a “silent disaster”. The theme for 2011 is diarrhoea, together with pneumonia, the leading cause of death for children under the age of five.

Radio Brussel produced this hard-hitting promo video.

The Dutch text reads:

Not every child is lucky enough to become 5 years old
Diarrhoea is the world’s biggest cause of death
for children between 0 and 5 years old.

WaterAid – Technical handbook: Construction of ecological sanitation latrine

Technical handbook – Construction of ecological sanitation latrine, 2011.

• Download (pdf)

WaterAid

This handbook is the outcome of the ecological sanitation latrine promotion projects carried out by WaterAid’s partners in Nepal: the Environment and Public Health Organisation, Lumanti Support Group for Shelter and Centre for Integrated Urban Development.

WaterAid – People’s perception on sanitation: Findings from Nepal

People’s perception on sanitation: Findings from Nepal, 2011.

• Download (pdf)

WaterAid

This document provides people’s insights on why some sanitation interventions successes and others fail. The study showed that awareness among the people about the importance of sanitation and hygiene for better health was higher than expected.

Nepal – Talking about menstruation

KATHMANDU, Sept 25: Nepal has come a long way in recent history in terms of gender equality, but if there is one issue that is still under a silent veil its menstruation. The taboos and lack of information regarding the monthly bleedings is slowly being addressed in schools.

“In Nepal, the main issue is embarrassment and lack of information about how to take care of your menstruation in a healthy and hygienic way,” says Anna Guiney, project officer of Water, Sanitation & Hygiene (WASH) under UNICEF.

The silence and embarrassment goes hand in hand with feelings of being dirty and impure and transcends school and life at home. In retelling her experience, 24 year old Shreejana Bajracharya says, “My mom didn’t teach me anything. I’m the oldest daughter in the family and when I first got my period I was scared.”

Despite having older female cousins, Shreejana was in no way informed about what was happening to her body and felt alone in her experience. “My mom didn’t explain it properly, if my younger sisters saw I had blood on my clothes my mother didn’t explain it to them either. I felt like something was wrong with me and I was the only one going through it.”

Asia: accelerated and sustainable progress in sanitation and hygiene is within our reach, hygiene experts say

Accelerated and sustainable progress in sanitation and hygiene is within reach in Asia, as long as we aim at district-wide coverage and build a broad alliance under leadership of local governments. This is the main conclusion of sanitation and hygiene experts from five countries (Nepal, Bhutan, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia) participating in a workshop for governance on water, sanitation and hygiene organized by the Nepal government together with SNV Netherlands Development Organisation and the IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre from 13 to 17 September 2011.

Regional sharing and learning from experiences is an important aspect of the Sustainable Sanitation and Hygiene for All programme being implemented in 17 districts across Nepal, Bhutan, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia, implemented by local government partners and assisted by SNV and IRC since 2008. Last year, this programme was intensified with co-funding from the AusAID Civil Society WASH Fund and recently with support from DFID in Vietnam. The aim is to contribute to giving two million rural people access to improved hygiene and sanitation facilities by the end of 2015.

Nepal, Mid-Western Region: sanitation card system introduced

Villagers in Salkot, western Surkhet, have to produce a “sanitation card” when applying for services from the Village Development Committee (VDC).

The “sanitation card” system was introduced in Salkot in mid April 2011 when it was declared an open defecation free zone.

The card contains information on whether the house of the card holder has a toilet and has pledged to no longer practice open defecation.

According to VDC Secretary Tilak Ram Adhikari red cards are issued to households which do not not concrete toilets and white cards to those which do have them.

The VDC office claimed that the out of total 1,553 households of the VDC, 1,117 households have been using toilets.

Source: The Rising Nepal, 18 Jul 2011

Brisbane WASH Conference 2011 presentations on hygiene and sanitation

Dr Val Curtis

“The most cost-effectiveness intervention for improving public health [is] improving hygiene promotion [and] without change in hygiene behaviour, we get none of the benefits of water, none of the benefits of sanitation”. This was one of the messages that Dr Val Curtis conveyed in her introduction to the session on “Behavioral change and social sustainability” at the WASH Conference 2011 (download audio of her presentation).

Some 224 conference delegates from over 100 organisations in 40 countries came to Brisbane, Australia for the WASH Conference 2011. Below is a selection of the presentations on sanitation – powerpoints + audio files – given on 16-17 May. (If you have never heard him speak before, don’t miss the presentation by CLTS-guru Kamal Kar). The presentation streams dealt with institutional, environmental, social and financial sustainability respectively.

Most of the presentations were about Asia, the focus area of conference co-organiser/sponsor AusAid. There were also a few presentations from Africa, a region where AusAid is looking to expand its WASH activities (see AusAid focus regions/countries).

WASH Conference 2011 presentations on sanitation

International

Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS), Origin, Spread and Scaling up
Presented by Kamal Kar
Slideshare presentation | Download audio

Planning Behaviour Change: Chances and Challenges
Presented by Dr. Christine Sijbesma, IRC
Slideshare presentation | Download audio

India, Nepal: poor sanitation in jails

Prisoners in Orissa state, India and in Sunsari District, eastern Nepal, are being deprived of proper sanitation and safe drinking paper, according to local newspaper reports.

India, Orissa

At a meeting in April 2011 on jail administration, Orissa’s Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik asked officials about sanitation and drinking water arrangements in state prisons. Inspector General of Prisons Pranabindu Acharya said he was making arrangements for aqua guards (water purifiers) in some of the jails. In most of the jails toilet facilities were poor and insufficient for the inmates, officials admitted. With more than 12,000 inmates in 86 jails in the State, overcrowding was a problem in at least 18 jails. In many jails, “conditions are appalling”, especially in tehsil (county) level jails where not even rudimentary conveniences have been provided.

While the Directorate of Prisons has made arrangements to invest 13.7 million rupees (US$ 305,000) for water supply and sanitation in at least 24 jails, the Chief Minister asked for a greater allocation of funds.

Source: The Pioneer, 08 Apr 2011

Nepal, Sunsari

The 524 inmates and staff at the regional jail in Jhumka, Sunsari district, have been deprived of safe drinking water and well-managed toilets.

“The jail administration has made written requests to the jail department and Ministry of Home Affairs several times for managing safe drinking water and constructing well-managed toilets but to no avail,” said jailor Bhojraj Regmi.

Source: Naya Patrika / NGO Forum, 09 Jan 2011

Related news: Human rights: UN investigator tells of horrors and insanitary conditions of world prisons, E-Source, 12 Nov 2009