Online Training on safe toilet design and treatment and reuse of faecal sludge in the rural areas of Nigeria, 18th December-6th January, 2021

The Rural Water-Waste Management Team conducted a specialized sponsored two-week online training on faecal sludge management in rural areas. The training was attended by 57 government officials from Federal Ministry of Environment, Nigeria. The objective of this training was to advocate the necessity of safe treatment, disposal and/or reuse of faecal sludge in the rural areas of Nigeria and build the capacity of the government officials of Nigeria, so that they can implement the knowledge in their country.

The online training involved self-study, online interactive discussions and live interaction with the experts. The live session enabled the participants to interact directly with experts like Dr. L.N.Rao, IISC Bangalore, who has developed a low cost grey water technology for rural areas, Mr. Chander Sampathraj from Gramalaya who work extensively on biogas based toilets and twin pit toilets and Sh.Dibyendu Sarkar, Secretary P&RD department, West Bengal on community sanitary complexes in rural areas and case studies on various research undertaken by CSE were presented. Apart from this various live doubt clearing sessions with the course coordinators, discussion forums helped participants interact and put forward their learnings enabling a better learning environment. This also motivated other participants to actively engage in the program. The participants appreciated the training programme. Participants also showed interest in attending the course physically when things become normal.