The WASH model is a collection of best practices for sustaining the supply of clean water, respectable sanitation, and sound hygiene in a range of settings. In India six percent of population (~229 million people) lacks access to improved sanitation, with 15 percent forced to defecate https://water.org/our-impact/where-we-work/india/ in the open.
PSI India piloted the Supporting Sustainable Sanitation Improvements (3SI) project in Bihar to understand demand for household toilets in rural Bihar. This learning informed the second phase of the project, which focused on developing and leveraging linkages between sanitation enterprise and value chain players for demand generation and toilet sales. The result was mobilisation of 137,970 households to buy toilets from 234 project-linked Sanitation Enterprises (SE) with the help of 21,000 consumer loans disbursed by MFIs through Sanitation Credit Financing services.
PSI India have also set up 24 sewage treatment plants/sewage pumping stations for fecal sludge disposal as part of our After the Flush (ATF) project in the states of Uttar Pradesh (UP) and Madhya Pradesh (MP) to help safely dispose 1.2 million litre fecal sludge.
Working closely with Government of Andhra Pradesh (AP) as part of Creating Sustainable Sanitation Market in Chittoor (Savera) project helped us reach more than 0.31 million households and 0.78 million people across all 1,372 villages of Chittor district who were inconsistent toilet users.The result: toilet use increased from 22 percent to 50 percent amongst all households with individual toilets.
received $7.73 million loan for toilet
purchases & enterprise business expansion
Then one day a family friend took her to PSI India’s ‘Saadhan Sanitary Mart’ (SSM), “For me, the desperate search for finding dignity finally came to an end. I am now the ambassador for SSM in my village,” smiles Kavita. Read full story More stories
In Kavita’s small village in Bihar, people would head for a nearby field in search of a little privacy every time they needed to defecate…
Then one day a family friend took her to PSI India’s ‘Saadhan Sanitary Mart’ (SSM), “For me, the desperate search for finding dignity finally came to an end. I am now the ambassador for SSM in my village,” smiles Kavita.
The overall investment in water supply and sewerage in India is estimated to be about INR 563,598 crores between 2012 and 2031 (Source: High Powered Expert Committee for Estimating Investment Requirements for Urban Infrastructure Services (HPEC, 2011. In this context, PSI India’s approach has been to foster, strengthen and expand key partnerships and networks – including those with NGOs, CBOs, governments, local bodies, communities, and international agencies to facilitate cross-sectoral programming, advocate for reform, convergence to scale up best practices, strengthening skills through
Experience has shown us campaigns that address sociocultural attitudes toward owning and using household toilets involving communities are more effective in accelerating a shift in people’s cultural practices in adopting sanitary practices.This is also borne out in the first phase of PSI project, which showed that 49 percent people wanted a toilet for reasons of safety (especially of women and children), 45 percent for convenience (especially in rainy season, odd hours/illnesses), and 24 percent for privacy (modesty of women). These findings were incorporated not only in the second phase of the project, but also in other projects like creating sustainable sanitation marketing AP, since much of the demand for toilet came from women(they were the worst sufferers and thus the most important influence in determining household hygiene practices). This is why house-to-house calls that motivate women to recognize they need toilets (as opposed to telling people up front their behaviour was unhygienic) became a pivot in various successful social marketing strategies that addressed behaviour change towards sanitation.
