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Capacity Building

One of the major achievements of the Swajal project is the tremendous capacity building of the project partners at the various levels, specially the rural community.

The capacity building of the Communities and NGOs should be seen as a wise investment towards achieving the paradigm shift in the approach to water supply and sanitation service delivery. Community capacity building directly leads to community participation and self management of O&M operations, which is the key to sustainability. Building the capacity of NGOs helps to reinforce to concept of partnership between government, the NGO and the rural community where the government mainly plays the role of a facilitator and environment builder. While in the medium term it leads to developing alternative systems of delivery in the long run it leads to public private partnership in the sector where key principles of the demand responsive approach can be adopted.

Capacity building at the community level:

The SOs are primarily responsible for building the capacity of the communities. Capacity of the community is built in many ways including trainings, cross visits, and hands on experience in purchasing materials and constructing the water supply and sanitation schemes and maintaining them.

(a) Trainings at the Community Level:

The communities are trained not only on the managerial aspects but also on various technical aspects of the project. Women are specially trained on the skills of their choice. The VWSC Treasurers are trained on the accounting aspects village. Masons are trained on construction of latrines etc. and village maintenance workers are trained on maintenance of water supply schemes. Moreover school teachers, traditional birth attendants, tapstand women representatives are also trained on sanitation practices.

(b) On the job capacity building:

While the above constitute formal trainings the major capacity building of the community takes place on the job. By the time the village community purchases non local materials and completes construction of the schemes. It develops a thorough knowledge of the various materials available in the market along with the brand names and details of manufacturer, wholesaler, retailer and the rates. Community also gets to know a lot about quality of the materials including how inspection should be done. Communities become adept at visual inspection of pipes etc. The community also develops the skill of negotiating with the vendors

During construction of schemes the community gains first hand experience on the technical requirement of the construction. The community learns to read maps and drawings, various technical components of water supply and sanitation system, and the level of difficulties in construction. On the one hand this leads to tremendous positive impact on the self confidence of the community, and on the other hand engineering skills developed are so vast that the Community becomes competent enough to manage other similar community works too.

Capacity Building at SO Level:

The major beneficiaries of the Swajal happen to be NGOs in the project areas who work as support organisations. There is a phenomenal increase in the fund handling capacity of the NGOs. As on today an average of about 80 lakhs per annum is handled by an NGO. SOs have built good capacity to keep accounts, which will have long run benefits while working with similar government funded projects.

(a) Software capacity of SOs:

Though NGOs have been traditionally doing community mobilisation in the past, Swajal has brought about a quantum jump in their community mobilization skills. For instance, most of the NGOs have learnt SARAR techniques for the first time. A number of training programs in the areas of project management, participatory methods, communication, gender and health issues have been organised Upto July 1999 training have been imparted to nearly 2000 SO staff.

(b) Training skills of the NGOs.:

Realizing the need for enormous amount of training needed and also recognising the fact that capacity built in a NGO should be harnessed back into the project, the project has been following a policy of decentralized trainings. Health and gender training are being imparted by identified NGOs. These NGOs have been imparted TOT through the nodal training agency, CDS, Nainital. Even technical trainings like construction technology and operation maintenance trainings are imparted by the NGOs.

(c) Engineering Capacity of the NGOs:

Development of the engineering capacity in water supply and sanitation in the NGO sector has been the major breakthrough in the project. The NGOs are normally used only for community mobilisation whereas for the first time Swajal project attempted to deliver the assistance to communities through an integrated package of software and hardware. So far in this country water supply had been the monopoly of government agencies. This is the first time in the country private capacity has been built in the water supply sector. Swajal project is proud of the cadre of young and world class engineers developed by the project. Interestingly, project has even helped the established private engineering consultancy firms to sharpen their expetise in water supply and sanitation sector. The project thereby has taken a major step in developing future non-government alternative delivery system.

Capacity Building at the PMU and DPMU level:

One of the significant achievements of the project has been to demonstrate a model nodal organigation (PMU/DPMU) which can think and act innovatively. It has put together a group of officers with expertise in water supply system minus the top down approach. Interestingly, the project has developed sound systems and procedures that have flexibility and transparency but can also withstand the rigours of government audit and public scrutiny.