This document proposes a rainwater harvesting project in schools to improve water literacy, resilience, and infrastructure. It involves designing and installing rainwater collection systems with student and teacher participation. It also includes education activities to improve understanding of water and sanitation. Implementation is divided into pre-intervention consultation, infrastructure installation, and post-installation monitoring phases. The goal is to empower schools and communities to better manage their water resources.

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Rainwater harvesting in Schools
A Tool for water literacy and water resilience
16/1/2017
Biome Environmental Trust

2. BIOME ENVIRONMENTAL TRUST
Rainwater harvesting in Schools
A tool for water literacy and water resilience
Background for the proposal
Biome Environmental Trust (Biome) has been working in Devanahalli taluk – with the Devanahalli town
municipal council and schools in the area. Biome has been working with government and government
aided schools of the area that suffer from water problems, reviving dead rainwater harvesting assets that
the government has already invested and building new ones where they don’t exist but there is a need.
Biome also engages with the teachers and students of the school to ensure complete ownership of the
rainwater harvesting system and its appropriate use. In Devanahalli town, Biome is working with
Devanahalli town municipal council and Karnataka Urban Waster, Supply and Drainage board (KUWSDB)
to pilot World Health Organisation’s Sanitation Safety Planning (SSP). It is also engaging with these
institutions and relevant corporates to sustainably augment water supply to a water starved Devanahalli
Town.
With the experience that Biome has in this area, Biome proposes that engagement with the schools in the
community as a good entry point to evolve into a potential larger community engagement. This concept
note details this engagement with schools. The following have been the observations in the schools in
the area
 Children coming to government school are typically children of landless laborers and lower
economic and social status like from SC/ STs and other backward classes. Landed farmers who
have sold off their land or people from upper social economic background send their children to
private schools.
 Villages have groundwater problem especially in irrigation context. However they may or may not
have drinking water problems. Sanitation in terms of lack of toilets and awareness about hygiene,
and open defecation are clearly prevalent issues.
Therefore, from the quick visits we observed that some schools have severe water issues with lack of
drinking and non-potable water supply, whereas some schools have water supply but may have water
quality or infrastructure issues. However, in all the schools there is an expressed need around water,
sanitation and health linkages in terms of awareness and education for the children. In this context, CSR
activities that intend to engage with communities can begin with engagement with these government
schools on water and sanitation.
Details of the proposed Engagement
The critical components in the proposal identified to build resilience and capacities in the school are:
Address: # 264, 6th Main, 6th Block, BEL Layout, Near Vidyaranyapura Police Station, Vidyaranyapura,
Bangalore 560097.

3. BIOME ENVIRONMENTAL TRUST
a. Co-designing rainwater harvesting systems for schools along with teacher, students and other
important stakeholders such as SDMC (School development management committee) members.
b. Implementing the rainwater harvesting systems (reviving them in case it already exists but is
dysfunctional) with participation from all important stakeholders.
c. Improve understanding of safe water and sanitation practices in the school through an activity
based, audio visual engagement with school teachers and students.
d. Improve understanding of importance of water- availability, demand-supply, water quality,
rainwater harvesting, maintenance of storage systems, maintenance of toilets, etc. in the school
through an activity based approach.
e. Improve the existing infrastructure, especially toilets for boys and girls in the school rendered
dysfunctional
f. Develop volunteer driven monitoring of these systems over time with technical support from
Biome
To achieve the above objectives, the work is proposed in three phases viz. conversation phase or pre-
intervention phase, intervention or implementation phase and post intervention or monitoring phase. The
latter sections in the document will elaborate on nuances in each of these phases.
Conversation phase/pre-intervention phase
The main idea behind this phase is to involve teachers and students right from the designing of
engagement. This will give an opportunity to share multiple ideas with the school as well as help us
understand the challenges the school might face during implementation and post-implementation. The
challenges the schools might face could be maintenance related, staff transfers, money related, or
political. It is essential to understand these problems with school to ensure long term sustainability for the
rainwater harvesting intervention. This phase will also help to identify different stakeholders like SDMC,
Panchayat, active teachers and students, and help in working towards mechanisms of involving them in
the process. Based on these conversations, suitable choices would be designed by these critical
stakeholders with technical support and handholding by Biome. Ideally Volunteer engagement can begin
upfront at this stage itself.
The intervention/implementation phase
Based on these preliminary observations, intervention phase has been designed. However, as mentioned
above, the actual intervention will be finalized only after the initial conversation phase with school.
The intervention phase would be for a period of 2 months. The activities during the intervention phase
would be prioritized in following ways:
Address: # 264, 6th Main, 6th Block, BEL Layout, Near Vidyaranyapura Police Station, Vidyaranyapura,
Bangalore 560097.

4. BIOME ENVIRONMENTAL TRUST
a. The hard component i.e. installation of rainwater harvesting systems, cleaning and reviving of the
existing suvarnajala systems (in case they exist) and minor plumbing work would be taken up in
the initial months
b. The soft component involving activity based learning with students and creating process of
engagement for developing ownership of the installed systems with multiple stakeholders will be
taken up in parallel.
The soft components and actual installations of the Rainwater harvesting system will be
intertwined in a way to ensure ownership of the system by the school and the village.
Hard component/Technical interventions:
1. Implementing/installing rainwater harvesting system
2. Plumbing and repair works for connecting pipes to the toilet, hand wash, cleaning of already
existing sumps and rainwater tanks
3. Installation of filters
4. Exploring end uses for the rainwater so as to identify mechanisms for withdrawal- hand pump,
tank above the toilet etc
Soft component/qualitative interventions:
1. Activity based learning: During the interaction with school teachers, lack of awareness about
hygiene and safe water practices was highlighted as an important issue. Therefore, for water and
sanitation literacy certain activities would be conducted. The activities may evolve based on the
conversation phase. Below are few activities conducted by Biome with government school
children:
- Simple rainwater harvesting setup (See for Rainwater harvesting implementation at a
government school in Vijaypura)
- Water quality testing through kits (Check for Water quality testing with government
school children)
- Vegetable garden and/or plantations
- Introducing concepts of Water demand-supply for the school, sources of water,
mapping of the sources of water, mapping of water quality of the each of the source
(Earthian Sustainability and water module)and a book will be published and kept in
the school as part of library
- Wall painting as a means to educate on water and sanitation
2. Based on the previous experiences and feedback from the conversation phase, communication
material as an output would be developed: water and sanitation education modules, posters,
videos, small movies to emphasize importance of water and sanitation. This can become a
standard “module” for water literacy for government school children. The focus of the current
exercise will be to bring this out in Kannada. This can be translated to other languages.
Address: # 264, 6th Main, 6th Block, BEL Layout, Near Vidyaranyapura Police Station, Vidyaranyapura,
Bangalore 560097.

5. BIOME ENVIRONMENTAL TRUST
Post intervention monitoring phase
The process of monitoring of the intervention would be for the next 12 months after the intervention. It is
proposed that monitoring phase be anchored by Company volunteers and staff from the villages and
Biome would provide support as and when required throughout. Following are the critical components of
this phase:
 Operation & Maintenance monitoring- Biome would provide technical support in maintaining
rainwater harvesting systems during this phase.
 Volunteer monitoring- Involvement of volunteers from the company should give an opportunity to
understand the impact of the engagements in school, parents, Panchayat, SDMC, etc.
 CSR learning- The process of engagement and feedback should be useful to understand other
problems the school is facing, the challenges in addressing those issues and most importantly the
learning should lead to conversations between Company CSR and the school and other
institutions for a larger engagement with the community.
The larger achievement of the engagement would be when the other schools and other members of the
village start taking interest in the initiatives implemented in these schools and demand for more
interventions emerge.
Implementation costs per School
These refer to the actual hard costs of RWH implementation in each school. This represents the value of
the infrastructure assets created for the school. This is an estimate for each school and may vary in
reality.
Item Detail Amount
Plumbing rework- for connecting pipes to the toilet, hand wash,
cleaning of already existing sumps and rainwater tanks and repair
work of toilets in case of dysfunctional
40,000.00
RWH underground storage, filters and system installation 70,000.00
Water extraction device (hand pump / motor etc) 15,000.00
Miscellaneous activities such as plantations / gardens / wall painting
etc
20,000.00
Water quality testing kits and water quality testing costs 2000.00
Total 1,47,000.00
Address: # 264, 6th Main, 6th Block, BEL Layout, Near Vidyaranyapura Police Station, Vidyaranyapura,
Bangalore 560097.

6. BIOME ENVIRONMENTAL TRUST
Facilitation Budget
Item Costs
HR for facilitation – identification of school, design of solution,
identifying contractor, engaging with SDMC/students, ensuring
implementation and water literacy. ( Does not include monitoring
for 1 year post implementation)
25,000
Travel (depends on actuals) 10,000
BIOME Admin 10,000
GRAND TOTAL 45,000
Contacts for the proposal
Primary contact for this proposal will be:
Aditi Hastak : aditi@biome-solutions.com
Secondary contacts for this proposal will be:
Avinash Krishnamurthy: avinash@biome-solutions.com
Shubha Ramachandran: shubha@biome-solutions.com
Note : This proposal is valid till 6 months of date of submission.
Address: # 264, 6th Main, 6th Block, BEL Layout, Near Vidyaranyapura Police Station, Vidyaranyapura,
Bangalore 560097.