Project Summary

People’s Learning Centre (PLC) for water and sanitation was set up to share and disseminate learning and expertise of Utthan’s team.  The PLC (People’s Resource and Learning Centre for Water and Sanitation), in collaboration with WASMO and Arghyam has focused upon capacity building of different groups at various levels, specifically on water and sanitation. This resulted in village communities becoming self-reliant and self-sustaining as far as water and sanitation are concerned. The central idea of this project was to develop and build the capacity of institutional mechanisms for water and sanitation facilities which are people centred, gender sensitive and demonstrative. This was done by:

• Creating a resource group model where the group at the community level (Area Resource Group) would be supported by District and State level resource groups. The Area Resource Groups helped communities gain access to Watsan facilities and derived support from the district and state level groups.
• Promoting sustainable and appropriate sanitation technologies such as Ecosan.
• Identification of supplementary credit sources such as micro-finance for sanitation.

In this project, Utthan engaged in collaborative capacity building by creating networks at state, district and panchayat levels. This helped provide water security and facilitated credit linkages for sanitation promotion.