The Kick-off meeting of the project was held in Nepal during 11-13 July 2006. Apart from kick-off meeting which was held among the representatives of the four institutions directly involved, a project launching ceremony was organized at the Annapurna Hotel, Kathmandu. Representatives of the government of Nepal, academia, NGOs, CBOs were also attended the project lunching ceremony. CEDECON of Tribhuvan University, Nepal provided all necessary efforts to make the occasion successful.

Dr. Roldan Muradian, IVO, Tilburg University, The Netherlands gave a brief presentation on the project named “Capacity building for enhancing local participation in water supply and sanitation interventions in poor urban areas”.

Mr Ishwari Paudel, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Physical Planning and Works, Government of Nepal was presented as the Chief Guest.

Dr. Bishwa Nath Tiwari, Associate Professor, Tribhuvan University, Nepal presented roles and activities of CEDECON.

Mr. Abu Jafar Shamsuddin, ITN-Bangladesh, Bangladesh University of Engineering & Technology, Bangladesh presented roles and activities of ITN-Bangladesh and shared Bangladesh experiences on Sanitation.

Ms Laia Domenech, Pretus ICTA, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain gave a brief introductory on the methodological protocol.

A website has been developed for the project and launched as a sub-domain of ITN-BUET. The objective of developing a website is to maintain communication among partners, as well as to disseminate main results. Apart from that various activities undertaken in course of implementation of the project are of interest to concerned stakeholders and interested groups of professionals. Such information are uploaded in the website which can be accessed by concerned users. ITN-Bangladesh is responsible for the information management and keeping the website functional. Information are updated and uploaded by ITN-BUET in consultation with IVO and other project partners.

The ‘Methodological Workshop’, a key activity of the project, was held at ITN-BUET, Dhaka, Bangladesh during 10 to 12 February 2007. The workshop was organized by ITN-BUET in collaboration with project partners.

The objectives of the workshop were of two folds:

1. to develop a harmonize methodology both for Bangladesh and Nepal to conduct 20 case studies on water supply and sanitation interventions in poor urban areas; and

1. to identify prioritized issues and develop an acceptable format for preparing the reports based on the outcomes of the case studies.

All partner institutions and other stakeholders attended the workshop. Total eight presentations were made in the workshop, including one introductory presentation and three case studies presentations. The participants also visited some fields and took part in group work & presentation sessions. Vibrant participation of the participants made it possible to accomplish the objectives of the workshop.

The proceedings of the workshop is available here for download

There are government institutions, donor agencies, INGOs, NGOs, CBOs and private sector that are implementing various projects on WSS at the field level in urban areas targeting the urban poor communities and have success stories of good practices. A series of case studies is being conducted in Bangladesh and Nepal. Total 10 case studies have been conducted in each country. ITN-Bangladesh and CEDECON have the responsibility for the fieldworks in Bangladesh and Nepal respectively.

Following are the case studies undertaken in Nepal

Click here to download the reports of the case studies.

Following are the case studies carried out in Bangladesh at various locations

Click here to download the reports of the case studies.

A Technical Workshop was organized during 1 – 3 June 2007 in Kathmandu primarily to share lessons learned from 20 case studies undertaken in Bangladesh and Nepal. Ten each in both the countries were conducted in the pre-selected sites applying an agreed methodological protocol. Systematization of the lessons drawn from all these 20 case studies was also an objective of this workshop with a view to developing a training course to impart knowledge and skill to the potential target group involved in WSS interventions in poor urban communities. Central Department of Economics (CEDECON) of Tribhuvan University in collaboration with project partners organized the workshop.

The workshop brought together experts from the region and beyond including academia, policy makers, donors, NGOs and private institutions with the following objectives:

• To share experiences and lessons learned in the field of community participation in water supply and sanitation interventions in poor urban areas of Bangladesh and Nepal
• To disseminate the lessons learned from the assessment of 20 case studies from Nepal and Bangladesh among the experts, policy makers, academia and other concerned stakeholders
• To obtain advice from the experts on how to translate the lessons learned into innovative curriculum and training materials
• To systematize the lesson learned from the case studies towards developing a training course

The workshop was dived into nine sessions. The sessions were consisting of presentations, field visit, open discussion and group work. A total of eight presentations were made in the workshop.  Active participation of about 70 key professionals of water supply and sanitation sector including government officials, policy makers, academia, private sector, donor community including European Commission and representatives from NGOs participated in different sessions made the Workshop fruitful. Valuable inputs and feedbacks of the specialists aided in forming a prolific outline of the training materials and made the workshop successful.
The proceedings of the workshop is available here to download.

A training course and materials of the course have been developed based on the outcomes of the case studies followed by the Technical Workshop. The training materials are available here to download.