Grameen Swapna

Grameen Swapna maintains a nation-wide working structure to facilitate the supports in a decentralized way. Grameen Swapna maintains a nation-wide working structure to facilitate the supports in a decentralized way. Presently Grameen Swapna is working as an apex networking and service delivery agency of 125 NGOs and Community-bases Organizations (CBOs) and that implement Water Supply and Sanitation (WSS) programmes to improve water supply and sanitation both in rural and urban areas. Since its emergence, Grameen Swapna has improved its operational and management capabilities and has gradually extended its outreach covering different areas of Bangladesh to provide support to its partners more effectively.

Household level: Activities include educating households on benefits and proper usage and maintenance of facilities;

Institutional level: Involves educating social and educational institutions;

Community level: Entails forming and mobilizing village WASH and WATSAN (water and sanitation) Committees to promote sanitation and safe water;

Administrative level: Covers social mobilization and advocacy activities directed at upazila and Union level officials to achieve buy-in.

Partnership level: Involves promoting the use of soap and other measures with the corporate sector and local government institutions.

Reinforcement of messages: Entails interacting with communication channels, both face-to-face, electronic and print.

Capacity Building: WASH has already completed training WASH staff, developed the curriculum and materials for training upazilla officials and thus began training upazila officials, village WASH committee members and other stakeholders.

Cluster Meetings on Hygiene Education: Cluster meetings are organized for raising awareness among the community (men, women, adolescent girls and boys, and children) on the use of safe water, sanitary latrine and good hygiene practices. Different types of communication materials are used for the target audience in this regard.

Activating Village WASH Committees: To ensure bottom-up participation, a committee consisting of 11 members have been formed in each village. Emphasis is given to recruiting from the poorer households in particular women. Participation by women is further encouraged by requiring village WASH committees to have 6 female and 5 male members. WASH committees meet monthly to assess the existing water and sanitation situation of the entire village, hence identifying the areas that need to be prioritized.

Conducting Advocacy Workshops: For effective collaboration and coordination with the Government, Grameen Swapna organizes meetings with WATSAN Committees at district, upazila and Union levels. The purpose of these meetings is to provide updates of the progress made by village WASH committees in the particular districts and upazilas.

Development of Local Entrepreneurship: There is a growing demand from small entrepreneurs for materials needed to produce sanitary latrines. In response, WASH has set up a total of 170 Rural Sanitation Centre’s (RSC) to provide interest free loans to private producers.

School Sanitation and Hygiene Education: In the rural areas of Bangladesh schools suffer from poor sanitation facilities, thereby increasing the risk of infection and disease among children. In addition, these schools often lack separate sanitary facilities for girls, a key factor for their disproportionately high dropout rate.