Nepal: Women can lead toilet construction work and support their family

The Kamalamai Integrated Water Sanitation and Hygiene (KIWASH) improvement project in Kamalamain Municipality in Sindhuli District, in the Janakpur zone of central south Nepal has envisaged adhering equity and inclusion prospective in project activities. The Centre for Integrated Urban Development (CIUD) has been working there in partnership with WaterAid in Nepal (WAN) since 2005 to provide safe and adequate water and sanitation including improvement in hygiene. One of the components is to facilitate and support in household sanitation improvement primarily focusing poor and marginalized communities in peri urban areas.

Bathanchoudi is one of the communities where toiletfacilities are being constructed. A local user committee “Bathanchoudi Batawara Tatha Tole Sudhar Samiti” has been formed to run the construction works smoothly and to make the community people accountable towards the development works and maintain the transparency. The majority of the committee members are women and from marginalized group i.e. Danuwar community. The leadership of the committee is run by Sarita Danuwar as a president of the committee.

Gender is also about men

This photo was taken by Sohrab Baghri, WASH coordinator for ACF Sierra Leone & Liberia, during a visit to a slum area in Freetown, Sierra Leone. This man was not only carrying a baby on his back, but he was also fetching water from a local well for his family. It is a rare sight to see a man breaking the cultural barriers in his society and performing tasks usually allocated to the female members of a family.

The man in question is Mohammad Turay and he is 66 years old. At the moment he is unemployed, but in the past he has worked as a plumber, electrician, carpenter and builder. He is married and the child on his back is his youngest and is one year old.

Mohammad explained that his actions demonstrate his love for his family and shows equity in terms of household responsibilities. He has been performing these tasks since he got his first child. Apart from caring for the baby and fetching water, he also occasionally prepares food for his family.

Changing Socio cultural practices related to Sanitation in India

As far back as 1997, remote villages in Uttarakhnad (Himalayan mountain region)women were unwilling to get married into the households where some privacy for sanitation was not available.
Same communities reported that having migrant sons in service in other towns, the families would be reluctant to travel to the village to visit or stay for any length of time if there was no toilet facility- when we travelled to understand the initiatives related to infrastructure and development in the region, we found man of these toilets locked or used for storage of grass- to keep the grass dry.

Potable Water Supply Women Empowerment Project

Existing source of water for the dwellers of Lemlem Cheffe and Girmiabo Kebeles is surface water which is of poor quality. Due to this they suffer from water born, water related and water washed diseases. In Gimbichu Woreda as in most developing communities fetching water is a task left entirely to women which takes most of their time. The main target of the project are 200 women and 4,800 dwellers whose health are most affected due to lack of potable water.