Potty Project research led to insights around opportunities to improve sanitation service delivery and, consequently, end-user perceptions around sanitary practices. These learnings were cased in four “pillars of innovation”: Operations & Maintenance, Branding Communications, Architectural Infrastructure, and Business Models.

1. O&M

Community sanitation facilities are in an ever-deteriorating physical state with derelict toilet hardware, broken doors or tiles, and accumulating layers of filth seeming an inevitable end for most. Overcoming people’s perceptions around participation in cleaning and maintaining these toilets will be a key challenge.

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Where research and ground realities meet: Project Sammaan!

I came to this realization while helping navigate the government land approval process. The research has its own considerations while the government officials have their own set of rules, so you need to find that delicate balance that satisfies both needs.

Here’s a peek into how the Indian government (at the municipality level, in this case) functions in terms of land approvals.

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Project Management

The field operations are moving at a brisk shape. In Bhubaneswar, the team visited many tenable slums to identify sites for public and community toilets. Through this exercise we have identified all the new sites for public toilets and some for community toilets; in the coming weeks the team will work to identify the remainder of the sites. Additionally, the discussions about tendering and approvals for Cuttack sites are going at a rapid pace.

Communications

Ryan, being the never ending self-critic that he is, tooled around with the blog design (again). Notice any changes? Take a look at the top of the page. That’s right, we have a fancy schmancy navbar complete with “About”, “Phases”, and “Contributors”. Hopefully this provides a bit of clarity to who we are and provides some direction on getting around the blog. One day, the upcoming main site will be completed and another overhaul will begin!

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Project Management

The Program Management Office (PMO) and Feedback Foundation at Bhubaneswar and Cuttack have been meeting the government to get locations finalized. Site selection has been a particularly challenging and iterative activity given the multiple concerns that need balancing: equity, architectural constraints, RCT design.

Siva is enjoying a well deserved break from work in a week-long meditation workshop using the Vipassana method.

Communications

This week, the communications team assisted on the full-court press of spreading the word on our Open Innovation Challenge. We tweeted, facebooked, emailed, googled, and many more internet propagation service (ed) it all over the internet in hopes of putting it in the right creative hands. The resulting interest was so overwhelming that we’ve extended the deadline to May 20th.

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Project Management

Last week a bunch of activities were planned for.

We submitted the final list of sites in Cuttack to be renovated based on our survey results and subsequent discussions. Key government members are meeting this week to discuss this and we are expecting the final approval soon.

The land identification process is continuing at full pace in Bhubaneswar. We worked with the Slum Improvement department to identify a list of unauthorized but tenable slums. These slums are not authorized by the government but the probability of them getting displaced is almost nill.

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Nirat working in the Gurgaon studio during a revision session following our trip to Orissa.

Project Management

Last week was quite a happening time in the field. We had productive meetings with both municipality commissioners about the project’s progress.

In Cuttack, we had the final discussion about the selection of the remaining sites. The Mayor, Commissioner, Deputy Commissioner and the head of the committee that approves the sites were present and they shared their requirements about site selection. Accordingly, we have shortlisted the final sites where the construction will begin.

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The group enjoying veg thali at our favorite grub hub in Bhubaneswar, Dalma.

The Project Sammaan team spent the week of 9/4/12 in the pilot cities of Bhubaneswar and Cuttack.

The team had various objectives while on-site, some overlapping and others independent. Overall, it was a productive, if busy, week and will direct our efforts in the coming months.

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