The toilets in SHRI’s sanitation units are free to use, and the facilities can purify about 1000 gallons of water in an hour! This water is sold to the people for 50 paise per litre!
Sonamani Devi, a resident of Dumdi village in Jharkhand, would go out in the dark with her three daughters before the sun rose. She didn’t have a choice. They had to find a location to answer nature’s call before the men arrived because there were no restrooms. But for Sonamani Devi and others like her, things have changed. “Now I can go to the bathroom as often as I want.” We don’t have to be concerned about the passage of time. She smiles as she says, “It’s safe and free.” Each facility, according to SHRI, is used at least 1000 times every day! SHRI’s approach is unique in that it not only meets the sanitation and hygiene needs of the country’s communities, but it also provides them with safe drinking water for just 50 paise per litre!
Sanitation and Health Rights in India (SHRI), which is trying to eliminate open defecation in India, is responsible for this shift. Over nine sanitation facilities have been built by the organisation, five in Bihar and four in Jharkhand, affecting the lives of over 5,000 people in these places.
Anoop Jain, Prabin Kumar, and Chandan Kumar created SHRI in 2014. Prabin, a social work graduate from Nepal’s Shree Bhuvan University, met Chandan, 34, at Project Why, a Delhi-based non-profit dedicated to children’s education. Chandan graduated from Bhupendra Narayan Mandal University in Madhepura, Bihar, with a degree in Political Science and had been working at Project Why since 2001. Prabin and Chandan both quit their employment in 2010 to start the Deep Jyoti Charitable Trust in Bihar, with the goal of providing quality education to rural children. While conducting research for their goal, they discovered that a lack of basic sanitary facilities is a major problem in many areas.