After the Akvo FLOW training that was conducted during the last week of June 2013 to the Nepal WASH Alliance (NWA) members by the Akvo Asia Hub, it was decided within the NWA partners that FLOW would be piloted after conducting training for the field level staffs.

To proceed and progress in the decision made, Lumanti and ENHPO decided to conduct a joint training in one of their intervention areas, either in Surkhet (ENPHO) or Kohalpur (LUMANTI). This training would pave ahead the path for piloting FLOW in the field and also take its implementation to the next level. The training required a simple User Guide/Manual in the interest of the Field staffs that would help them in the operation of FLOW. Hence, a User Guide focusing in the Use of FLOW in an offline mode was prepared and disseminated among the NWA members.

Finally, the training was conducted in Kohalpur, Banke on 21st and 22nd of September, 2013 where participants from Lumanti, ENPHO and Sahakarmi Samaj were present.

The training content and structure was jointly prepared, reviewed and finalized by all the 3 Resource Persons from Lumanti and ENPHO. A 2 day schedule for the training was prepared in which Day 1 covered the theoretical insight about Akvo, Akvo FLOW and Mobile Phone. A detailed description about the survey questionnaire was conducted along with clarification on important terms that would be in use during the operation of FLOW. An overview of the FLOW Dashboard was also planned to be shared with the participants.

Day 2, the team visited Belanpur and Gauaha communities where Lumanti has been implementing its Integrated WASH programme with support from Dutch WASH Alliance and in coordination with NWA. Two schools “Shri Madarsa Himalayan Garib Nawaz Primary School, Belanpur” and “Shri Jana Chetana Primary School, Gauaha” were selected to test the Institutional Baseline questionnaire. During the data collection, the Resource Persons were closely in coordination with the participants to support them, in case if any problem or gap would arise.

After the data collection, the team returned and started a brief discussion on how the entire training went. At the same time, the participants were allowed to discuss among themselves and bring out feedbacks and suggestions to the training and survey questionnaire. At the end, a joint understanding was made to use FLOW in collecting Baseline of the new intervention wards and a deadline (1st week of November, 2013) was set for the submission of Baseline data. All necessary coordination and procedures for starting the baseline were decided in the team.

The participants were impressed by the ease of operation of Akvo FLOW and shared how bulky and confusing their data collection used to be when they did all in paper. The participants from Lumanti and ENPHO were very much interested to start it in baseline collection soon while the participants from Sahakarmi Samaj were very positive about their organization using FLOW and added that they would recommend it as a urgent need to reflect their work. However, the participants also added that it would have been better if the training was planned for 2 Full Day so that everyone would have been more acquainted with the mobile phone.

With a commitment to meet the deadline of submitting baseline survey, by the participants and a continuous support by the Resource Persons to the field staffs to make them more confident in using FLOW, the 2 days’ training came to an end.

Jigmy Palzor Lama is Monitoring & Documentation Officer WASH at Lumanti Support Group for Shelter