Sanitation Work
For girls and women, the lack of toilets also affects their privacy and safety – they often wait until dark to find a quiet place to defecate, which increases the risk of being harassed. Without toilets in schools, children are left to defecate in the open. This makes them vulnerable to diarrhoeal illnesses and causes them to miss school.
WaterAid and rural sanitation
Sanitation is at the core of our programmes delivery and through our advocacy and campaigns, we raise awareness of the fact that improvements in sanitation are key to the success of many other areas of development – including health, environment, education, housing and infrastructure. Some key highlights from our work are –
- In Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, we provide technical support to the district and state governments to ensure access to toilets by everyone, everywhere. Our key focus is to form community cadres, make the mandated institutions (such as schools and health centres) self-reliant, promote hygiene education, and ensure access to toilets by disabled people and the most marginalised. We have also initiated models around solid and liquid waste management in selected gram panchayats in collaboration with State Swachh Bharat Mission.