It has been a busy few months, and things are well under way with the water and sanitation project. Suppliers and materials were organised back in June, the groundwork was blessed during a special opening ceremony and the start of the pipework has begun. A few weeks ago, Mother Nature sent a major flash flood, causing some damage. Thankfully, no lives were lost and the damaged pipework will be replaced. Pipeline joining work has also started on the village side, i.e. the tail part of the project. The TA Consulting Firm (the engineers overseeing the project) has been re-mobilised in the field and a field visit with Rotary Kavre-Banepa (based in Nepal) will happen soon. We are still on track for completion of the pipework service before the Dashain Festival at the end of September.
The Dashain Festival is one of the most important Hindu festivals which is celebrated all over Nepal. It usually falls in the month of September or October and is actually celebrated for 15 days. It starts from bright lunar fortnight (Shukla Paksha) and ends on the day of full moon (Poornima) according to the Nepalese annual calendar. Dashain honours a great conquest of the gods over the evil demons.
Plenty of activity is happening behind the scenes with a three day book-keeping and account management training course. It was completed by various people including the Water Users Committee (WUC) Chairman, the WUC Treasurer, Storekeeper/TA Social Mobiliser and WUC Members. The course was facilitated by a lead trainer, co-trainer, construction engineer, field technician and an HLF member. Feedback has been positive, with participants finding it very useful. Special focus was given on practical tasks, not just a theoretical approach. This helped the participants feel confident with the basic foundations of accounting and are now happy to maintain their accounts.
We have also just held Health & Hygiene Awareness Training. This was held close to their homes, which meant that 30 women and 9 men from the community were able to attend. Both of the trainers were National MToT (Master Training of Trainers, they have extensive experience in community level training). Everyone found the training very enlightening and entertaining and were very happy to attend.
