Review and strengthening of Wise Water Management and enhancement of the capacity of state of Madhya Pradesh to improve water security in tribal residential schools with UNICEF
UNICEF WASH’s programme is supporting the Flagship Programmes on water, sanitation and hygiene in ensuring equitable and sustainable access to and use of safe water and basic sanitation services with particular emphasis on socially excluded groups. Therefore UNICEF implemented the WWM design in 21 tribal residential schools; these “WWM models” convinced the Tribal Welfare Department (TWD) and the Public Health Engineering Department (PHED) to replicate WWM systems in 400 hostels across Madhya Pradesh, with a leveraged fund of Rs. 60 million. So far, as reported by PHED, 252 schemes have been completed and the remaining works are in progress. TWD has proposed to cover all tribal residential schools in the State through WWM.
In addition to construction and repair work CARD also was also involved in preparing a training manual capturing the Operation & Maintenance component developed and shared in workshops. In all 32 Hostels & Ashram schools and approximately 2100 students’ teachers / Hostel and Ashram superintendents and officials participated in these workshops. Further Ganga Ma Mandals (Kitchen Garden) were established in 21 Hostels (UNICEF) supported system. The Ganga Ma Mandal (Kitchen Gardens) were established after selection of area/place, formation of brick boundary, replacing the moormi soil with black soil, removing the stones and bed preparation etc.
Exposure and representation visits of selected students and teachers were organized in various districts in which more than 200 students and teachers took part. The District level work shops were also organized to share the approach followed in the project to achieve the desired results in each district. During these workshops district wise detailed power point presentation were made to the participants including officials from tribal welfare department, PHED, scheduled caste welfare department, Teacher, wardens and students.
A way forward workshop to share the findings of the WWM was organized at Bhopal in which more than 50 different stakeholders participated in discussions sharing their experiences. It was decided in the workshop that PHED may immediately make an assessment of the status of existing WWM systems high lighting requirement of fund for repairs/ renovation, and may immediately hand over all complete systems to tribal and schedule caste welfare department for onward handing over to Hostel management. At the same time the TSCWD (Tribal and Scheduled Caste Welfare Department) may also include the inspection of WWM systems in the runtime monitoring system of the department, The annual maintenance fund for small repairs may be placed at the disposal of Hostel/Ashrams and one time budget provision for renovation/major repair of existing non-functional system to the Hostels /Ashrams be made.
Documentation of voices of Children: Documentation of voices of children is an important component of this project. To facilitate the same different exercises ware facilitated amongst children and staff of Hostels and Ashram Schools in all the districts. A workshop was organized during September 2012 to design and develop the tools to record the voices of children. During the workshop a power point presentations were made on child rights, the link between our project objectives, output and child right, techniques & tools to be used while discussing with children etc. group of children including girls and boys of Bhopal hostel also participated in the workshop on day two. Some of the identified techniques were tested among this group of children. For documentation of voice of children different teams of non project members visited the institutions (Hostel and Ashram schools) of Dhar, Jhabua, Guna, Shivpuri and Bhopal Districts. During their visit the documentation team gathered the information from children regarding their views to-word utility of WWM system in their hostels & Ashrams children appreciated the system and suggested some points to improve the working of this system comparing the practices of Hygiene and sanitation between home and hostels etc.