Addressing & providing services of WASH for pavement dwellers and working children
Sajida Foundation started a project Improving access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene for pavement dwellers and working children naming as (IMPACT) in Bangladesh from 1st October, 2012, supported by Water Aid Bangladesh. SAJIDA Foundation Provides sanitation facilities, safe water and hygiene management to the working children and pavement dwellers who are completely segregated and marginalized from the society and are usually deprived of the above mentioned services through this project. One of the main strategies of the project is to complement and supplement governments effort in ensuring access to safe
water and sanitation services.
The IMPACT Project aims to work with the exclusive community like working children, and pavement dweller with the objective of improving the health status through increased accessibility to safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene promotion. These groups of poor and excluded people live in dire conditions as they have no access to safe water and drinking water from different sources.
They are subjected to public defecation and they are unable to pay the fees charged for using public toilet. Apart from that, there are enormous number of small industries and factories in Dhaka city where children are involved in different sorts of work.
These children are school dropouts between the age group of 8 to 18 years. These children work at a very low wage rate at these factories. They come from different districts and start working in an unhealthy environment only to help their families. They are also deprived from safe drinking water, clean bathing water and sanitation.
From this backdrop, SAJIDA Foundation being a Non-Government organization took initiative to address the mentioned problems of pavement dwellers and working children on WASH sector by getting the technical and financial support from Warer Aid Bangladesh to operate this project.
The project is implemented in few locations of Dhaka city where the pavement dwellers and working children live in cluster namely Lalbagh, Kamlapur, Karwan Bazaar, Green Road, Mouchak, Sadarghat, Polashi, Azimpur, Mirpur Gabtoli covering ten thousands pavement and working children.
The project provides both hardware and software Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) services. In terms of water services Ultra-Violate technology based purification water point system for ensuring safe water supply is installed at the places where pavement dwellers and street children have the access.
On the other hand, sanitation facilities are created continuously as per need of beneficiaries. In case of software services, a series of various hygiene sessions are conducted with the deserved population. For instance- Joyful session, hygiene session with pavement dwellers and working children, menstrual hygiene session and hygiene campaign. Besides, different kind of WASH related days are observed with the active engagement of the concerned population including world water day, sanitation day, hand washing day etc.
The ultimate goal of this mentioned hygiene sessions is to change the hygiene behavior and cleanliness for promoting better health condition.
Under the IMPACT project, 7084 beneficiaries have been offered so far with water, sanitation services. The aim of the project is to cover 10000 beneficiaries by giving WASH services in this year. Currently we are working 4 new schools, 12 factories and 7 different areas identifying few clusters, pavement dweller center and drop in center to reach pavement dwellers as well as working children in order to provide this services.
Moreover, recently we have given emphasize in advocacy part to collaborate government related bodies to bring the pavement dwellers and working children under the WASH policy of the government to ensure their rights. We hope that, WASH right would be ensured for this under privileged people of this society by taking initiatives from both government and Non-government organizations together practicing holistic approach for overall development.n
M. Monaemul Islam Sizear.
Project Coordinator
SAJIDA Foundation
E-mail- [email protected]
