Meena Pokharel, a local woman of Darechowk-7, Chitwan District has increased the yield of vegetable production by applying urine in her cultivars. She has been sprinkling her crops with diluted urine solution for last five months.
According to her, she learnt about the use of urine from a training programme organized in Darechowk VDC few months ago. She was not familiar to the nutritive value of urine before that training.
Nowadays, anyone visiting to her place can see more than 100 urine-filled bottles scattered near her toilet. She collects and stores urine for 7/8 days before applying it on the crops. The stored urine is diluted by adding water- three times the volume of urine.
She is satisfied from this practice because it has increased agricultural productivity and helped her reducing the expenditure, which she would have to spend on buying chemical fertilizer.
Pokharel is not the only woman in her community, who is practicing this. Urine is collected and applied on cultivars as manure at all the households in her community. An EcoSan Resource Centre has been recently established in their community, which has also motivated them in doing so.
The resource centre pays one rupees for a pee, which has made us enthusiastic to learn and understand the value of urine- Pokharel said.
EcoSan Resource Centre
The EcoSan Resource Centre was established by a local organization The SEWA Nepal with support of Environment and Public Health Organization (ENPHO) with the purpose to promote EcoSan toilet in Darechowk VDC.
The resource centre has aimed to establish Darechowk as the first EcoSan village of Nepal, said Shreerendra Pokharel, coordinator at EcoSan Resource Centre. It also provides training on EcoSan toilet and its uses to the villagers.
To facilitate the visitors in learning about EcoSan toilet, the models of different types of EcoSan toilets have been demonstrated at the centre. The informative wall posters and other materials have been displayed to provide additional information.
The resource centre has also put a notice to ‘Take a Pee and Get One Rupee’ to introduce and sensitize people to the value of urine, and motivate them for utilizing it.
Darechowk and EcoSan Toilet Coverage
Darechowk VDC is one among 36 VDCs of Chitwan district. According to the report released from Darechowk VDC, there are 1656 households with total population 10,712 in the village. Among them, 203 households are ultra poor and 216 are under poverty line. Besides, there are 19 public and 4 private schools in the village.
Secretary at Darechowk VDC Nil Kantha Lamichhane claimed that all the households in the village have their own private toilets. He added that the VDC has provided 2 bags of cements to the villagers for toilet construction. Similarly, the SEWA Nepal is providing an EcoSan toilet pan and a pipe to motivate them to construct EcoSan toilet.
He further shared that 717 households have constructed EcoSan toilet at their home where as remaining are using pit and other type of latrines. According to him, other households in the village are also making their mind to replace their existing toilets with EcoSan.
The VDC has targeted to establish Darechowk VDC as the first EcoSan Village of the country by constructing EcoSan toilet at all households.
18th Open Defecation Free VDC in Chitwan District
In Darechowk VDC, all the households have access to toilet facility. Every inhabitant in the village uses toilets every day instead of going to open field as before. It has improved the environmental condition in the village.
This VDC was declared Open Defecation Free zone on 15 July, 2010. After this declaration, number of ODF village has reached to 18 in Chitwan District.
The government of Nepal has targeted to declare Chitwan as the first ODF district of Nepal. It has been implementing various programmes in the district with support from various organizations including UNICEF Nepal, WHO, Department of Water Supply and Sewerage, and ENPHO to achieve this target.
Sharing the achievements about sanitation improvement activities, Coordinator of Sanitation Model District Madan Mall told that they have been promoting 9 different types of toilets in Chitwan. He further informed that the district is progressing in sanitation. Currently, the sanitation coverage in Chitwan district is 92 percent.
There are 378 community based schools in Chitwan, among them 239 schools have already been declared ODF. Similarly, 72 among 98 thousand households in the district are ODF.
These activities implemented so far in Chitwan have not only sensitized the district people, influence of it can be noticed in other adjoining districts as well. Gorkha, Tanahun, Dhading and Makwanpur districts have already initiated implementing activities to declare ODF district, too.
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