Building communities of practice on water quality

Healing traditions in India have withstood the test of time. Not many of us need to be taught to mix a pinch of haldi in a glass of milk to cope with sore throat, now famously known as turmeric latte, or to add a pinch of dry ginger to our tea when we catch a cold. These practices seem to have percolated from generation to generation and have been enriched more and more with experience and sharing, and have evolved into new ways of doing things.

INREM’s Water Quality management course is based on a similar tradition of passing knowledge seamlessly from the experts to the practitioners on the ground to carry it forward to their communities. 

Reaching the unreached

The Water Quality Management course has completed 14th Batches as on December 2022, reaching 1500 participants in 300+ districts across all states and UTs of India. 
 

Making connections

While a large number of participants gained knowledge on how to deal with water quality problems, the challenge was to reach the community in need. #WaterQualityChampions need to connect with people who need help and also with other #WaterQualitychampions and experts to share knowledge and gain from each other’s experiences to solve the problems at hand. 

Building communities of practice 

After completing the WQM course, INREM understood the need for a platform to build a community of practitioners where they can meet regularly, discuss and solve problems. The guided mentoring programme was set up for Water Quality Champions to connect with other Water Quality Champions every week to share their experiences and problems and explore solutions together. The interaction is designed in such a way as to break the communication barriers and provide a safe space to share and discuss issues openly and come back regularly to share experiences from the ground. 
 

Structure of a guided mentoring session

• Case Presentation (30 min)

A case is presented by one of the members about a specific challenge faced in the ground 

• Brainstorming session (30 min)

The participants are divided into smaller groups and sent to zoom breakout rooms. Each group is led by an anchor from the INREM team to brainstorm on the possible solutions for the case presented. 

• Solution (15 min)

The participants join back from the brainstorming session. An expert will summarize the discussion and advises on the possible solution to be tried. 

• Conclusion (15 min)

The anchor creates a “Support group” where interested participants can join and continue to engage and solve the case that was presented. The session is concluded by capturing attestations on the Participatory Digital Attestation (PDA) platform. 

What happens post-session?

After the guided mentoring session, the person who had presented the case becomes the anchor of the Support group. He/She will actively engage with the group members to arrive at possible solutions and take it back to the ground. After two months, the group revisits the same problem and discusses the progress made. 

Challenges faced in guided mentoring sessions and how were they addressed

• Defining the problem

  : Sometimes practitioners get overwhelmed by the many factors acting together and struggle to define the problem clearly.  A simple case study template is used to present the case that makes problem definition easy.  

• Identifying an expert

  : After defining the problem, identifying the right experts who can support to solve the problem is challenging at times. Years of investing in building the water quality network has helped to reach out to the right experts.

• Lack of communication

  : Getting people to speak during the sessions can be a problem. Use of prompts describing the problem to trigger conversations have been helpful to get people to open up. 

• Functioning of the support group

  : Ensuring the support groups actually work on the problems with due attention and move forward is a challenge. Motivating the case study presenter to run these support groups have helped to keep the support groups active.

Progress till now

Examples of topics presented during the guided mentoring sessions:

• How to translate data into meaningful action
• How to transfer actionable knowledge to the community
• How to increase people’s interest in sampling river water quality?
• How to devise strategies to ensure drinking water security for people in times of contaminated water sources or epidemics?
• Challenges in water quality monitoring in the mountains and how to overcome them
• How to sensitize rural communities on safe drinking water? 

Voices from the Guided Mentoring sessions 

Sarla Turker presenting her case challenge (Source: INREM Foundation)

Khilleshwari Sahu presenting her case challenge (Source: INREM Foundation)

The guided mentoring sessions have become an active, engaging space to exchange ideas, share experiences, learn from each other and collaborate to improve water quality at scale. The future is indeed hopeful as more and more people try to find solutions to their water quality problems on their own, through exchange of ideas and knowledge enriched with practical experience collectively to take this movement forward.