Helps construct 625 toilets in U.P.’s Nagla Kashi & Nagla Uday Rampur
India CSR News Network
NEW DELHI: India’s leading healthcare company Dabur India Ltd today crossed a significant milestone in its journey towards improving the sanitation standards in rural Uttar Pradesh with Nagla Uday Rampur & Nagla Kashi village achieving ‘Open Defecation Free’ status from the state administration.
Dabur, along with its CSR arm SUNDESH, has helped construct toilets in households of both the villages, ensuring that all the 625 households in the two villages today have individual toilets and both the villages are now free from open defecation. With this, three villages adopted by Dabur India Ltd have achieved ‘Open Defecation Free’ status this year.
Keeping in line with the largest cleanliness drive in India, Swachh Bharat Abhiyan by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Dabur christened its sanitation programme ‘700 Se 7 Kadam’. The program seeks to shelter the dignity and protect the health of women in rural India by bringing toilets closer to them. In addition to helping construct toilets, Dabur also provides specially designed cleaning kits to the households to ensure regular and proper maintenance of these toilets. Special training sessions are also organized in the villages where the residents are educated about the need for using toilets and awareness generated about proper hand-wash after using toilets.
“Dabur as the India’s most trusted healthcare company has embarked on a journey to help our government achieve an Open-Defecation Free (ODF) India by constructing 1,200 rural household toilets in 28 villages by the end of this fiscal. We are now on course to achieve its target of ensuring Open Defecation Free status for at least 5 villages in the 2016-17 financial year.”, Dabur India Ltd CSR Head A. Sudhakar said.
“We have been working towards not just improving the sanitation standards in villages of Uttar Pradesh, Uttaranchal and Himachal Pradesh, but also safeguard the dignity of women in the process. We have been working with the community to ensure that all households in the target villages have individual toilets. We are proud to announce that our efforts have borne fruit and we have added one more village to the list of Open Defecation Free villages this year.” Sudhakar said.
Dabur has also commenced construction of separate toilet blocks for girls and boys in select villages in the three states. It is providing financial support for construction of household & school toilets in villages in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh. This programme also sought to build a clean and hygienic environment through various awareness programs in schools, slums and public areas.
“At Dabur, we believe that an organization’s true worth lies beyond its business, and is best reflected by the service it renders to the community and the society. One of the major problems in villages is lack of sanitation facility and women majorly suffer from it. While keeping the thought in mind, we started a project for promoting sanitation with construction of household and school toilets and also run awareness campaign in schools and villages.”, he further added.
“To ensure involvement and participation of the community members, we involved the women from the household in this project and payment cheques are given to the women, who are the big drivers of this initiative. The payments are linked to the construction and paid in two parts to ensure that the household is involved in constructing the toilet. Since toilets are constructed in the individual households, they are responsible for cleaning and maintenance of the toilets, making the project sustainable in the long run.” Sudhakar added.
In the first phase of this programme, Dabur has selected 17 villages in district of Hapur & Gautam Budh Nagar (Uttar Pradesh), 6 villages in Rudrapur (Uttarakhand) & 3 villages in Baddi (Himachal Pradesh). In the financial year 2015-16, Dabur had supported construction of 1,048 household toilets in rural Ghaziabad, Rudrapur & Baddi.
