As they say, water is life. Access to safe water is critical to maintaining a certain standard of living.Inadequate or inaccessible water supplies can lead to many illnesses such as diarrhea, fluorosis, cholera, hepatitis A and trachoma. We need basic clean water for cooking, cleaning, and general household hygiene. Smart Village Movement with Watsan wanted to find cost-effective water and sanitation solutions in rural areas of Meghalaya with challenges in accessing clean water.
In order to take the first steps towards solving the problem, a pilot project was initiated to conduct water testing in 50 SVM treatment villages. The pain points that were identified in these areas were: 1. Inaccessibility to potable water 2. Contamination of water resources 3. The prevalence of waterborne diseases. All the water testing kits were provided by Watsan. And the water testing process was done by SVM project lead Divine Dkhar, block coordinators, and interns from Martin Luther Christian University.
The parameters which were tested to determine the quality of water were:
The objective of this project was to ensure that inhabitants of Meghalaya get access to clean water for their domestic requirements and have consistent availability of water in households across rural areas in Meghalaya. The project pilot phase, which began in August 2021, involved water collection and testing from all villages, primarily under SVM. At the end of the pilot phase, water tested from all 50 villages under the SVM showed that all villages had safe drinking water and required no further treatment, only access to this water had to be improved with direct tap connections in each household.
