Jal Jeevan Mission, the Government of India’s (GoI) flagship programme aims to provide safe and adequate drinking water through individual functional household tap connections by 2024. The programme also envisions implementing source sustainability measures such as water recharge and reuse through greywater management, water conservation, and rainwater harvesting.

For the effective implementation of the programme, the GoI has empaneled institutional partners, called Key Resource Centres (KRCs), to support its efforts at different levels. These partners will support the Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation, Ministry of Jal Shakti, in training and capacity building of the stakeholders, developing IEC resources, information dissemination, and documentation of best practices.

Gram Vikas is one of the KRCs in Odisha and is only one of two nonprofit organisations represented in the national task force to achieve the mission goals.

For 2021-2022, Jal Jeevan Mission aims to enable a community-owned and managed Functional Household Tap Connection (FHTC) for every household in Odisha. Gram Vikas has over three decades of experience establishing infrastructure and governance systems for FHTC in rural Odisha and Jharkhand. Our work in rural water and sanitation has benefitted 82,000 households in 1435 villages spread over 30 districts in Odisha and Jharkhand.

As a KRC, Gram Vikas will build capacities of nearly 1200 community-level participants and conduct 240 trainings in the first year to better manage village-level drinking water supply systems. We will train the Village Water Sanitation Committees, self-employed mechanics, and implementation support agencies.

Gram Vikas is an Implementing Support Agency (ISA) for the Berhampur Rural Drinking Water Supply & Sanitation division. We will support village communities to draw a Village Action Plan (VAP) in 7769 villages across 892 Gram Panchayats in Ganjam, Gajapati, Kandhamal, and Boudh districts.

Through a Participatory Rural Appraisal approach, we will support the communities to undertake a socioeconomic assessment, resource mapping, and water quality status. It will assess the current drinking water sources, options to provide drinking water to every household, and measures for source sustainability. The PRA exercise will aim to draw up plans for water conservation, collection of user charges, and effective solid and liquid waste management in the village to ensure that the programme outcomes sustain.

In the first phase, interactive sessions with various community leaders and government representatives like the VWSC, SHG, Sarpanch, Ward, and PRI members are taking place to ensure better understanding and broad uptake of the initiative.

Read the feature in Jal Jeevan Samvad on our community-owned and managed integrated water and sanitation interventions: https://bit.ly/2XDJNsp

Know more about our work in Water: https://bit.ly/3Au2mgx