New Delhi, March 1, 2013: Two years ago, 10 small villages along Yamuna were selected for a river restoration project. The Nadi Mitra Mandalis were given an action plan that included natural and organic farming, waste water management, improvement in sanitation, catchment restoration, and assessment of the river and village health. Children were involved through a school outreach programme.
On Friday, Kanalsi village, on the floodplain of the Somb and Yamuna rivers near Yamunagar, was recognized for carrying out the most successful project.

Kheyali and Dipayanti
A grade 9 student of Panchagram High School, Ghaighata Block, North 24 Parganas, West Bengal, the first rank holder in class with a lot of dreams to excel in life- this is Kheyali who is just 13 years old.
Dipayanti is 14 and she is in Grade 10.
Both Kheyali and Dipayanti share two things in common. They go to the same school and they both are members of the School WATSAN Committee.

Dec. 22, 2012: The simultaneous attainment of financial, environmental and social sustainability of urban services is an important requirement of development. Given the huge investments that are being made in the improvement of urban infrastructure and services in India, it is of the utmost importance that these investments are made in a manner that brings about the greatest good of the greatest number in a sustainable manner.

Megh Pyne Abhiyan (MPA) in partnership with SAMTA (partner organization in Khagaria district) is piloting the localized version of Phaydemand Shauchalay  aka productive toilet/ecological sanitation in two tolas (hamlets) (Nepal and Railway tola of Khagaria district) as an alternative and appropriate utility  for the flood prone areas of Bihar.

About the initiative
Megh Pyne Abhiyan in partnership with Water Action is executing a peoples’ centered, driven and owned alternative secure sanitation, personal and menstrual hygiene management process and facilities in Burmi Tola, a flood prone hamlet of Rupaulia village of West Champara district in Bihar. The initiative is being supported by Stockholm Environment Institute, Sweden and Wash Institute, India.

March 29, 2012: The real heroes of environmental and social change are the ones that don’t get talked about often and don’t want any accolades. One such man lives very to near my town and he makes sanitary napkins for a living. A high-school dropout by the name of A. Muruganathan is the inventor of a machine that can churn out 120 pads an hour. It costs about 1 rupee (0.02 USD) for each napkin and the machine itself costs about Rs 66,000 (USD 1500).

Plan India supported School WASH project is being implemented in three districts (Mayurbhanj, Gajapati and Uttarkashi) of two states (Odisha and Uttarakhand) in India since last one and half year. The project basically aims at promoting improved hygiene practices among school children (and their non-school attending peers) and realizing their rights to adequate school WASH infrastructure that is universally accessible and having dedicated facilities for girls.

Abstract:
Total sanitation campaign (TSC) has aimed towards cleanliness and is achieving considerable success in the State of Maharashtra in India. The campaign has been instituted Award for clean villages in year 2000 by the Maharashtra State Government in the name of Sant Gadge Baba Maharaj to foster a new culture of self-development through community action.

Over the past 5 years CARE, Emory University’s Center for Global Safe Water, and Water.org, through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation-funded Sustaining and Scaling School Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Plus Community Impact (SWASH+) project, have worked to achieve sustainable and national-scale school WASH services in Kenya through applied research and advocacy. The project tested a multi-armed school WASH intervention through a randomized, controlled trial with multiple policy-relevant sub-studies.

Provision of inadequate number of urinals in the toilets constructed in schools often leads to the development of unhygienic conditions. As a result, toilets created in most of the schools across the country are not being used and as a result most of them are in the state of disuse. According to the norms, one urinal for every 20 children must be provided. However, this norm is not being strictly followed due to lack of sufficient financial allocation for toilet construction in schools.