PARTICIPATORY PLANNING FOR ENVIRONMENTAL SANITATION PROGRAMME FOR THREE PANCHAYATS IN KERALA

Funding Agency: Department of Science and Technology, Govt. of India

The major objective of the project is to identify the environmental sanitation issues of three Panchayats in Kerala and to prepare an action plan for implementing Total Sanitation and Health programme of these Panchayats with community participation. The project also envisaged to carryout Pilot Scale implementation of various environmental sanitation components in selected areas and also to develop an Information System. The need assessment for identifying the sanitation issues of three Panchayats was carried out involving the trained local community. A Health Promotion Team consisting of 60 persons was also identified and trained in all the three Panchayats. A detailed Action plan for Environmental Sanitation of three Panchayats was formulated based on the data from the need assessment survey. The Community was involved in all stages, viz; identification of needs, prioritisation, action plan preparation etc. in all the three project Panchayats. The Panchayat committees were also involved in all the stages of the activities. The action plan mainly focused on four aspects like (i) Household sanitation (ii) Public place sanitation (iii) Institutional Sanitation and (iv)Personal hygiene, attitude and lifestyle of the people. IEC activities were carried out in all the three Panchayats especially in all the schools.

One of the major objectives of the project was to implement pilot scale models on various environmental sanitation components like rain water harvesting, sanitary protection of wells, school sanitation, solid and waste water management etc. The ultimate aim was to build up a model for Environmental Sanitation at Panchayat level formulated and implemented with community participation.