As UNICEF India looks ahead to the next country programme (2023-27), one of the priority areas that it is looking at supporting under the realm of social and behavioural change in Kerala is WASH (Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene).
Siddartha Shrestha, Chief, Communication for Development, UNICEF India, who was in the State capital recently, spoke to The Hindu on the significance of social and behavioural change in general and WASH, in particular.
UNICEF, he said, believed that social and behaviour change was still very important, be it in education, water, health and nutrition, and so on. In Kerala, UNICEF was looking to identify priority areas, in consultation with the State government, where it could provide support for social and behavioural change. WASH was one of the areas.
Kerala was one of the first States to achieve ODF status in 2016, but water contamination remains a major challenge, especially bacteriological. The Suchitwa Mission has launched an IEC campaign named ‘Malambootham’’ to sensitise the public, elected representatives, and local self-government department officials, thereby leading to a behaviour change in the target audience and improved focus on water quality and faecal sludge management (FSM). The WASH Institute and UNICEF are supporting the campaign, intended to reach out to 941 grama panchayats and 93 urban local bodies through handbooks, leaflets, and videos on FSM and grey water management.
Mr. Shrestha said UNICEF would focus on adding value to WASH through communication and behavioural change. It would help with designing communication plans that would benefit all 941 panchayats, development of IEC materials, gauge their effectiveness, look into the feedback from the community through evidence-based programming to further improve them, find if there were any gaps in capacity building, and if training was required to address these.
UNICEF, though, went beyond capacity building to social accountability and community engagement, he pointed out. For instance, it did a lot of work in the State, particularly after the 2018 floods as part of the Janakeeya Pankalithavum Punarnirmanavum initiative, designed on the lines of the global approach of Accountability to Affected Population. This built on community feedback and accountability mechanisms to make communities more strong and resilient and learn lessons from the flood response. So even as capacity building of Kudumbashree frontline workers was on, they were trained as enumerators and their findings led to a decentralised community-based disaster risk reduction plans in the State, he said.
One of the other areas UNICEF was exploring was how to start social and behaviour change modules in academic institutions. This was being done in 22 universities across 11 States, and UNICEF was looking at Kerala too for this, Mr. Shrestha said.
