Water and Sanitation Programmes - Bihar

Child Friendly Schools in Vaishali

In Bihar, CEE has partnered with UNICEF and Bihar Education Project Council (BEPC) to promote Child Friendly Schools and Systems (CFSS) in 100 schools of Vaishali district, Bihar. This initiative focuses on demonstration of 'Swachh Vidyalaya -Swasth Vidyalaya' education ensuring a set of functional and well maintained water, sanitation and hygiene facilities along with improvisation in overall school's teaching learning environment, thereby making the school environment a 'child friendly learning' space.

Child friendly schools and systems covers child friendly quality education system, activity based learning, proper function of SMC, MTA, Child Cabinet, Meena Manch with clean & green environment of school, proper (WASH) sanitation and hygiene practices by students and safe and nutritious MDM. School sanitation and hygiene depend on a process of capacity enhancement of teachers, community members, SMCs, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and Community Based Organizations (CBOs) and education administrators. A key feature of this 20 months long campaign is to ensure that these 100 schools are developed into a 'Swachh Vidyalaya Swasth Vidyalaya' campus ensuring a set of functional and well maintained water, sanitation and hygiene facilities along with improvisation in overall school's teaching learning environment, thereby making the school Environment a Child Friendly Learning space.

NABARD Water Campaign

NABARD, on the occasion of World Water Day 2017 launched a major country wide Water Campaign "Jal Jeevan Hai" covering 1,00,000 villages in vulnerable/water stressed areas where the ground water is over exploited. The campaign was focused on adopting water conservation practices in agriculture. Over 250 most vulnerable/ water stressed districts were covered in 21 major States. The campaign was conducted with an objective to have mass participation and voluntary action on water harvesting, conservation and encouraging water use efficiency in agriculture. Centre for Environment Education (CEE) as knowledge partner of the campaign to develop and facilitate training module, training sessions for master trainers and jal doots, IEC material and strategy.

Under this campaign, around 10water stressed districts were covered where master trainers were identified and trained from Bihar. These districts were Banka, Bodhgaya, Darbhanga, East Champaran, Gopalganj, Jamui, Kishanganj, Nawada, Samastipur and West Champaran. These master trainers have then selected Krishi Jal Doots (KJDs) to reach out to over 300 villages. These KJDs were given training by master trainers and a set of educational material was also provided to run the campaign activities. Then the KJDs have interacted with over 3 - 5 lakh farmers, women, villagers and children during this Campaign. They carried the messages of water conservation, water recharge and water management which was spread among community people who took oath to conserve water.

As part of this campaign, a one-day programme "A Day in the Village" was done by Krishi Jal Doots. KJDs have met key people in village and identified 11 youth volunteers who had further helped them in running campaign activities. During the campaign day, save water awareness rally/padyatra, water resource mapping, meetings from farmers and self-help group women members and Krishi Jal Samvaad event open for all the village people was organized. Post campaign, feedback was taken from KJDs through debrief workshops to capture the essence of campaign.