New Delhi | 20 September 2018
To promote accessible sanitation in rural India, Svayam & Foundation for Accessible Aquanir and Sanitation (FAAS) (the Indian arm of water.org) organized a project launch event in New Delhi on 20 September 2018.
The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed on 02 August 2018 to implemented over a period of three years.
Ms. Sminu Jindal, Founder-Chairperson, Svayam, & MD, Jindal SAW Limited, graced the occasion and formally launched the project. The event was attended by Director, Svayam, Mr. Manoj Gulati, Executive Director India, water.org, and Director, FAAS, along with Ms. D. Buvaneswari, Senior Program Manager, FAAS, and other key personnel of the both organisations.
Commenting on the unique project, Ms. Jindal said: “As every home has elderly people, women and children, an accessible toilet is a need and not a choice. Also, it provides safety and ease-of-use when someone in the family gets sick or injured, or when a lady in the house is going through pregnancy or has a C-Section. The families having children or persons with disabilities certainly need such toilets.”
Svayam Founder added, “As awareness is lacking in rural India, it is imperative that we go out there and tell people that they need such family toilets. Through this project, people will be able to know that building an accessible toilet is not expensive; it is done differently. I hope this project will set an example for many more states to follow and it will also strengthen the Government’s ‘Accessible India Campaign’ as well as ‘Swacch Bharat Abhiyan’. I wish the Project Team a great success!”
This project can create a larger impact in propagating the concept of ‘Accessible Family Toilets’ in rural areas. The project is sustainable as once the families start using it, it will spread by word-of-mouth and more families would like to own this kind of toilet.
The brief details of the project are given below:
States to be covered: Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Odisha
Target beneficiaries: Families with elders, persons with reduced mobility, persons with disabilities, injured/sick family members, pregnant women/new mothers and children.
The five key pillars for this project are:
- Establishment of Technology Specifications for Rural Special Need Toilet
- Supply Chain Market Creation and Mason Training
- Local People and Stakeholder Awareness and Demand Generation
- Credit Financing for Self-Construction
- Monitoring and Evaluation
Svayam is the Funding and Knowledge Partner of this project, while FAAS is the Implementing Partner. The objective of the project is to encourage people in rural areas to build accessible family toilets with the loan from Financial Institutions (FIs). With the grants from Svayam FAAS will launch awareness campaigns, create IEC material, hold workshops, and promote Accessible Family Toilet as a financial product and encourage rural households through self help groups to take a loan to built or retrofit an accessible family toilet.
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