2. BIOME ENVIRONMENTAL TRUST
WATER, SANITATION AND HYGIENE (WASH) IN SCHOOLS:
A TOOL FOR WATER LITERACY AND WATER RESILIENCE
CONCEPT NOTE
Brief Information about Biome Environmental Trust:
Biome Environmental Trust (The Trust) was formally set up in the year 2009 with the aim to
conduct research, public education, practice-to-policy bridging and policy advocacy in the
areas of land-use & land-use planning, energy, water and sanitation. The key concerns of all its
activities in these areas are ecological and social sustainability in India and the developing
world. In an era of emphasis on economic growth coupled with the threats of climate change,
The Trust seeks to evolve solutions to critical resource problems of the present and future.
Concerns of Equity, Environment and Economy are all equally integral to the Trustโs endeavors.
Its research encompasses scientific, technological, socio-economic and policy research. The
overall approach is solution centric and one of knowledge-based activism through action
research, engagement with citizenry, policy advocacy and engagement with governance.
The Trust is also currently working with urban and rural schools in and around Bengaluru City
to implement ecological water practices in the schools simultaneously achieving education
goals, environmental goals and goals of resource security for the schools. In the rural context,
it also serves as an excellent starting and entry point to water and sanitation issues in the
villages. Biome has been working with government and government aided schools of the area
that suffer from water problems, reviving dead rainwater harvesting assets that the government
has already invested and building new ones where they donโt exist but there is a need. Biome
also engages with the teachers and students of the school to ensure complete ownership of
the rainwater harvesting system and its appropriate use. The involvement has been across
rural and peri-urban government schools and across urban private schools.
Biomeโs actions and vision is driven by the concept of โresponsible water frameworkโ. In
simpler terms, it means that evolving the process through which the one becomes aware and
thus, responsible towards the usage of water, demand of water, treatment of water and
ultimately disposal of water. It will hopefully instill the awareness to take care and โownโ itsโ
assets.
Approach
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) developed by UN speak about equitable and safe
access to water, sanitation and hygiene as critical indicators for determining the sustainable
water and sanitation management. The SDGs also emphasize on availability of facilities to the
disabled, special kids, and women.
At national level, we have been talking about Swach Bharat Mission (SBM) which talks about
toilets in every school. The learning from SBM has also been that while one time construction
infrastructure is easy to be made, the real difficulty is in making the toilets operational and
maintaining it regularly.
Address: # 264, 6th Main, 6th Block, BEL Layout, Near Vidyaranyapura Police Station, Vidyaranyapura, Bangalore 560097.
3. BIOME ENVIRONMENTAL TRUST
The earlier engagement also showed that some schools have severe water issues with lack of
drinking and non-domestic water supply, whereas some schools have water supply but may
have water quality or infrastructure issues. For instance, in many schoolsโ toilets blocks exist
but the structure is not safe. The reason being, there is no roof, toilet doors are broken, no taps
and plumbing exist. Also, the reason for toilets not being functional is not due to water
unavailability but due to lack of funds to make it functional and in usable form.
However, in all the schools there is an expressed need around water, sanitation and health
linkages in terms of awareness and education for the children.
The learnings from prior engagement with the institutions especially government schools
suggest that the ownership of the system increases when the school stakeholders are closely
involved in the entire process. Therefore, Biome will ensure that the entire program to be as
Participatory and as local as possible. Preference will be given to the local contractor or
service provider and solutions will be evolved locally.
Details of the proposed Engagement
The critical components in the proposal that emerge from the learnings and experiences
narrated above are: The solutions from below will be need based for each school and will be
decided after preliminary conversations.
a. Co-designing rainwater harvesting systems for schools along with teacher, students
and other important stakeholders such as SDMC (School development management
committee) members.
b. Implementing the rainwater harvesting systems (reviving them in case it already exists
but is dysfunctional) with participation from all important stakeholders.
c. Improve understanding of safe water and sanitation practices in the school through an
activity based, audio visual engagement with school teachers and students.
d. Improve understanding of importance of water- availability, demand-supply, water
quality, rainwater harvesting, maintenance of storage systems, maintenance of toilets,
etc. in the school through an activity based approach.
e. Improve the existing sanitation infrastructure, especially toilets for boys and girls in the
school rendered dysfunctional, hand wash, wastewater disposal facility
f. Develop volunteer driven monitoring of these systems over time with technical support
from Biome
Address: # 264, 6th Main, 6th Block, BEL Layout, Near Vidyaranyapura Police Station, Vidyaranyapura, Bangalore 560097.
4. BIOME ENVIRONMENTAL TRUST
To achieve the above objectives, the work is proposed in three phases viz. conversation phase
or pre-intervention phase, intervention or implementation phase and post intervention or
monitoring phase. The latter sections in the document will elaborate on nuances in each of
these phases.
Conversation phase/pre-intervention phase
The main idea behind this phase is to involve teachers and students right from the designing of
engagement. This will give an opportunity to share multiple ideas with the school as well as
help us understand the challenges the school might face during implementation and post-
implementation. The challenges the schools might face could be maintenance related, staff
transfers, money related, or political. It is essential to understand these problems with school
to ensure long term sustainability for the rainwater harvesting intervention. This phase will also
help to identify different stakeholders like SDMC, Panchayat, active teachers and students, and
help in working towards mechanisms of involving them in the process. Based on these
conversations, suitable choices would be designed by these critical stakeholders with technical
support and handholding by Biome. Ideally Volunteer engagement can begin upfront at this
stage itself.
The intervention/implementation phase
Based on these preliminary observations, intervention phase has been designed. However, as
mentioned above, the actual intervention will be finalized only after the initial conversation
phase with school.
The activities during the intervention phase would be prioritized in following ways:
a. The hard component i.e. installation of rainwater harvesting systems, cleaning and
reviving of the existing suvarnajala systems (in case they exist), improving sanitation
infrastructure and minor plumbing work would be taken up in the initial months.
b. The soft component involving activity based learning with students and creating
process of engagement for developing ownership of the installed systems with multiple
stakeholders will be taken up in parallel.
The soft components and actual installations of the Rainwater harvesting system will be
intertwined in a way to ensure ownership of the system by the school and the village.
Address: # 264, 6th Main, 6th Block, BEL Layout, Near Vidyaranyapura Police Station, Vidyaranyapura, Bangalore 560097.
5. BIOME ENVIRONMENTAL TRUST
Hard component/Technical interventions:
1. Implementing/installing rainwater harvesting system
2. Plumbing and repair works for connecting pipes to the toilet, hand wash, cleaning of
already existing sumps and rainwater tanks
3. Installation of filters
4. Exploring end uses for the rainwater to identify mechanisms for withdrawal- hand
pump, tank above the toilet, etc.
5. Improving sanitation infrastructure like roofing of toilets, door repairs, plumbing repairs,
handwash facility repair and construction (whichever is applicable)
Soft component/qualitative interventions:
1. Activity based learning: During the interaction with school teachers, lack of awareness
about hygiene and safe water practices was highlighted as an important issue.
Therefore, for water and sanitation literacy certain activities would be conducted. The
activities may evolve based on the conversation phase. Below are few activities
conducted by Biome with government school children:
- Simple rainwater harvesting setup (See for Rainwater harvesting
implementation at a government school in Vijaypura)
- Water quality testing through kits (Check for Water quality testing with
government school children)
- Vegetable garden and/or plantations
- Introducing concepts of Water demand-supply for the school, sources of
water, mapping of the sources of water, mapping of water quality of the
each of the source (Earthian Sustainability and water module)and a book will
be published and kept in the school as part of library
- Wall painting to educate on water and sanitation
Address: # 264, 6th Main, 6th Block, BEL Layout, Near Vidyaranyapura Police Station, Vidyaranyapura, Bangalore 560097.
6. BIOME ENVIRONMENTAL TRUST
2. Based on the previous experiences and feedback from the conversation phase,
communication material as an output would be developed: water and sanitation
education modules, posters, videos, small movies to emphasize importance of water
and sanitation. This can become a standard โmoduleโ for water literacy for government
school children. The focus of the current exercise will be to bring this out in Kannada.
This can be translated to other languages.
Post intervention monitoring phase
The process of monitoring of the intervention would be for the next 12 months after the
intervention. It is proposed that monitoring phase be anchored by Company volunteers and
staff from the villages and Biome would provide support as and when required throughout.
Following are the critical components of this phase:
๏ง Operation & Maintenance monitoring- Biome would provide technical support in
maintaining rainwater harvesting systems during this phase.
๏ง Volunteer monitoring- Involvement of volunteers from Company should give an
opportunity to understand the impact of the engagements in school, parents,
Panchayat, SDMC, etc.
๏ง CSR learning- The process of engagement and feedback should be useful to
understand other problems the school is facing, the challenges in addressing those
issues and most importantly the learning should lead to conversations between
Company CSR and the school and other institutions for a larger engagement with the
community.
The larger achievement of the engagement would be when the other schools and other
members of the village start taking interest in the initiatives implemented in these schools and
demand for more interventions emerge.
Address: # 264, 6th Main, 6th Block, BEL Layout, Near Vidyaranyapura Police Station, Vidyaranyapura, Bangalore 560097.
7. BIOME ENVIRONMENTAL TRUST
Contacts for the proposal
Primary contact for this proposal will be:
Aditi Hastak: aditi@biome-solutions.com
Secondary contacts for this proposal will be:
Avinash Krishnamurthy: avinash@biome-solutions.com
Shubha Ramachandran: shubha@biome-solutions.com
Biome Environmental Trust:
Website: www.biometrust.org
Blog: www.biometrust.blogspot.com
Facebook Page: Rainwater Club and Biome Environmental Trust
APPENDIX 1
Links for project references:
๏ถ Nammashale School,
๏ถ Jakkur Govt. School,
๏ถ Bijuwara Govt Primary High School,
Address: # 264, 6th Main, 6th Block, BEL Layout, Near Vidyaranyapura Police Station, Vidyaranyapura, Bangalore 560097.
8. BIOME ENVIRONMENTAL TRUST
๏ถ Rainwater harvesting in a government school,
๏ถ Rainwater harvesting implementation in Kannur Government school,
๏ถ Water demand, water cycle and rainwater harvesting session
Address: # 264, 6th Main, 6th Block, BEL Layout, Near Vidyaranyapura Police Station, Vidyaranyapura, Bangalore 560097.
