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The Guts for Change team finally reached Pune and the first toilets are being installed

R. Gensch
R. Gensch wrote on 19-10-2012

We are pleased to let you know that our Guts for Change team managed to cycle the entire 10,000 km from Berlin to Pune (India) and safely reached India last week. This is really an amazing achievement. Congratulations!!! 

...and meanwhile the first 6 toilets have been installed and officially inaugurated in Darewadi.   

Sven and Kevin, 2 German students who recently founded the Non-Water Sanitation e.V, actively supported the Ecosan Services Foundation in India during the last 2 months as part of an internship and have been involved in the whole assessment, planning and implementation process in Darewadi. Below you will find a nice little summary of their activities. Well done guys!!! 

 

"On the 28th of August we arrived at the office of Ecosan Services Foundation in Pune. The mission was to get an overview of the project and work together with the ESF to start the project  successfully. Basically we wanted to know everything about the village and about India. The work we did aims at being the fundament to get Darewadi Open Defecation Free in the next years. So we collected as much data as we could by conducting health, household and agriculture surveys. We also did mapping, analyses of water and soil samples. Additionally interviews with the local doctor and farmers complemented the research . At the same time, we spent a lot of energy on working with the kids and talking with the adults about hygiene and Open Defecation . In general, Darewadi has 77 households and around 670 inhabitants. Till now 21 families have a toilet, but these are latrines which are not environmentally suitable. As we spoke to some of the owner of these toilets they said that they would like to have UDDTs (Urine Diversion Dehydration Toilets) because they could get fertilizer out of it. The results of our health survey and the interview with the local doctor show that the biggest problems among villagers are waterborne diseases like Typhoid. Also 3/4 of all interviewees considered that they had serious stomach aches in the last 12 months and the analysis of the water sample taken from the local river revealed that the water is not safe to drink. All these insights clarify how important toilets really are and that it is truly worth to raise the issue.In everything we were doing in the village we were warmhearted welcomed by the villagers and strongly supported. We feel that the people in Darewadi are open to the technology and that they can´t wait to own their private toilet.Right now 6 toilets are ready and till the 19th of November another 4 will be. In general 38 households said that they would like to have a drytoilet. That’s why, with your help, we want to equip another 28 households with drytoilets in the next year. Our current challenge is how we can reduce the cost of one toilet to build more units with your funds."