Project Sammaan’s initial pilot phase in Bhubaneswar and Cuttack involves the construction of 100+ separate community and public sanitation facilities. Some of these facilities will replace existing, non-functional toilet blocks on the land these failed facilities currently occupy, whereas others will be built on new land allocated by the municipal corporations for use in the project.

Irrespective of this, every site requires vetting to ensure it complies not only with building codes but also within parameters set by the project itself. In order to arrive at the final list of sites, nearly twice as many proposed areas as will be built on needed to be documented and evaluated.

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We met a gentleman during a visit to Baibaba Basti in Bhubaneswar who was one of the slum’s original residents. He’s lived there for over 25 years and has been progressive in trying to get amenities and facilities for the community as a whole. One of his major successes was getting the government to sanction 3 toilet booths for the community.

A few months after these toilet booths were built, the community realized that they needed to build at least 3 more, and proceeded to build them while extending the septic tank and creating runoffs.

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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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Additional disabled user testing needed to be conducted, so we began seeking out participants through various channels.

After failed attempts at recruiting users through various organizations, we decided to use the snowballing method of recruitment where you ask someone you know to connect you to someone they know and so on. We looked closer to home and reached out to our office staff. Our cook, Mr. Dayanand, offered to help us recruit people from his community in ‘Chiragh Dilli’, as well as at a nearby temple where a small community of disabled people beg for alms.

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Two children pose infront of their school in Sikharchandi.

Quicksand’s approach is about human-centered research and design and Project Sammaan encapsulates this.

An ancillary goal in this project is to engage and inform a larger community about sanitation in India specifically and life in the slums here generally.

For some of us at Quicksand, Sammaan represented the first opportunity to visit a slum community. We decided to share that experience by embedding Ryan and I (both Americans) in one of the slums we’re working with for 24-hours. The objective being to share what living without adequate sanitation would be like, if only for a short time.

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Engaging communities is, in my opinion, by far the most fun and challenging part of the projects we do at Quicksand. Due to this, we were both nervous and excited about returning to the field after creating a guide and toolkit to elicit and record community responses during feedback sessions.

Ensuring Diversity & Representation

The first step was screening participants. Our on-field partners, CFAR, accomplished this by screening potential participants that fell into one of several profiles we defined. These profiles ranged from recently married couples with newborn infants to elderly or disabled individuals who might use a crutch, staff, or wheelchair.

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