Training on District Level Planning for Fecal Sludge Management in Rural Areas

Date: April 26 - 30, 2022

Rural Water and Waste rolled out its5-days residential "Training on District Level Planning for Faecal Sludge Management in Rural Areas" from 26^th-30^thApril, 2022 at Anil Agarwal Environmental Training Institute, Alwar. The training was a tailor-made programme for the Swachh Bharat Mission Grameen officials. Around 23 officials from the state of Meghalaya, Assam, Uttar Pradesh and Telangana. The training intended to advocate the importance of decentralized treatment of faecal sludge in rural scenario.

The training started with understanding issues and basics of faecal sludge management and importance of sanitation in rural context, followed by lessons on onsite sanitation systems. Sessions on technical aspects related to retrofitting of toilets, planning and designing of faecalsludge treatment technologies were taken up during the training. A session on legal, financial and institutional frameworks and reuse of the faecal sludge was also organized.

Sessions on Urban-Rural convergence with introduction to cluster approach were also taken up. To give a better understanding on urban-rural convergence – alive coverage of the success story from Dhenkanal, Odisha was done. Participants were taken to Lalsot FSTP to understand the convergence. The participants were given an exposure of live model projects of decentralized treatment of wastewater and rainwater harvesting in the AAETI campus. The participants were also taken for visit to our in-house testing laboratory.

The training had a mix of lectures and hands-on activities to prepare a district level plan. The training sessions were undertaken by various internal and external experts.The participants developed a modeldistrict level plan and presented it during the training.