ONGOING ENVIRONMENT RELATED PROJECT

Bishnumati Cleaning Campaign

Bishnumati River Cleaning Campaign aimed at promoting environment, sanitation and health in the affected areas, raising the community awareness, reducing the psychosocial stresses through attending the social needs of people with insufficient things for livelihood and ensuring their integration within the community. By improving the quality of living and socioeconomic status of the people through community organization, and building their capacity to manage their development activities. Working with affected population, local communities and partner organizations seeks to minimize the environmental health impact and water resource. Appropriate structures were established at community level to coordinate the environmental health activities. Innovative, alternative solutions were utilized through which people will become more closely involved with environmental health management, sanitation and pollution control.

Homes Nepal has been working in the Bishnumati River Cleaning Campaign and greenery belt either side of the river bank since established. It is the continuous activity of Homes Nepal until its restoring natural state.

The project was prioritized the following activities:

• Meticulous social mobilization at the grass roots level regarding environmental conservation, waste management, and river protection,
• Ensure the participation of community people in project activities, especially in key areas such as household level, water sanitation, environment conservation and health services,
• Raising the awareness of the communities in health and environmental related issues and producing Information, Education and Communication (IEC) materials in this regard,
• Continuous advocacy and promotion for more partnerships, to secure political commitment and mobilize additional resources,
• Provide technical support, including training; networking and information exchange,
• Research methodologies, including participatory research on effectiveness and efficiency of interventions,
• Encourage and support monitoring and evaluation of activities.

Activities

In this time, Homes Nepal was able to clean the 1000 mtr. at western part of Balaju Bridge. The cleaning campaign has been conducting from Shobhabhagwati Bridge to Paropkar Bridge (500mtr).

The followings were the project activities of the Bishnumati River Cleaning Campaign

A. Observation of the Bishnumati River

The Bishnumati River was observed by the project experts. The condition the Bishnumati River is totally covered by the bio non degradable solid waste and all the households wastages are thrown in the river. No one water animals are in alive stage. Bad smelling is wide spread from the river which is hazardous to the health. The animal dead bodies were also found the river.

B. Formation of User Groups

The team of Homes Nepal has formed the user groups by intriguing the local dwellings of river corridor. In every 250 m river, two user groups were formulated in each bank of river. We took some places 1 Km as well. All together, 51 user groups were formed. The user group is responsible for the awareness programs for sanitation and cleaning campaign.

C. Production of IEC Materials

Various forms of IEC materials were designed and developed to strengthen the capacity of community people to aware the sanitation and conservation of environment along with river cleaning campaign. Caps, T-shirt, Informative flex and pamphlets were designed and distributed in appropriate positions/persons. Voice information also dissimulated for the stakeholders by using loud speakers to aware the people.

Being informed and being able to communicate provides an opportunity to deal with feelings and allows individuals to make informed decisions about their situation. IEC materials can also provide security, identity and signs of hope. Moreover, ignorance of rights can lead to exploitation effective distribution of information can counter this. Information and communication systems can be designed to help community members play an active role in their own recovery process, to be active agents of change rather than passive victims.

D. Collection/Buying of River Cleaning Tools

Some river cleaning tools were collected from the Kathmandu Metropolitan City and bought some materials by Homes Nepal to make it sufficient.

E. River its Corridor Cleaning

Homes Nepal had prepared the five candidates with full equipments for inside cleaning of the river. The five candidates went inside the river and took out all the solid waste in the bank of river. They also cleared the blockage hindered by the solid waste and let the water flow easily. The garbage were collected from the bank of river by the river cleaning participants and put in the garbage collection vehicle. Moreover, the other wastes from the river corridor were collected by the participants and put in the collection vehicle.

F. Dumping the Collected Garbage

The collected garbage were delivered and dumped by the vehicle in the dumping side in Sisdol, the municipal dumping site. The whole system was organized by the Homes Nepal with the help of Kathmandu Metropolitan City.