Our strategy entrusts the community with powers to plan, design, own and manage their own water supply systems. WASMO has strong faith in the principle that a sense of 'Ownership and Pride' is to be instilled among the community.

• Creating institutions at the village level and strengthening them through continuous capacity building
• Focus on IEC and software activities before taking up development of infrastructure for water supply
• Putting entire programme in public domain for seeking strong citizens' engagement
• Social process based demand driven programme implementation for achieving stakeholder engagement, gaining public confidence, strong community leadership, accountability and efficient service delivery
• Building strong partnerships based on transparency and trust with community, community institutions and NGOs.

WASMO in addition to development of physical infrastructure also gives due emphasis to IEC activities and generation of public awareness and a feeling of responsibility towards water related issues. These "Software Activities" include various measures like Gram Sabha, publications, folk media, electronic media, rallies, campaigns and workshops. These IEC and capacity generation activities are undertaken to generate awareness, share knowledge and create an enabling environment and promoting a behavioral change. Every effort is put to stimulate the necessary skills into the community and trainings are also imparted to villagers addressing a wide array of issues from project planning to post implementation operation & maintenance.

A flexible and adaptive approach is adopted so that the processes can be altered to suit socio-cultural, geographic and economic locale of the project beneficiaries. Transparent systems are deployed at all levels and communities are galvanized to demand more and more openness in the system.

Community-Managed Programme Imperatives- Not Negotiable

Community-managed programme has been scaled up with due consideration that its objectives are fulfilled in a long run. Therefore, it has become important to set some “Not Negotiable” standards for achieving the community participation in real spirit and they are as follows:

• Willingness of community to join with the programme
• Formation of Pani Samiti in Gram Sabha to enjoy people consensus
• Community willing to share partial cost (mostly 10%) of scheme work with real contribution from >80% houses. Community and Pani may consider Samiti at their discretion to exempt community contribution for poor/ deprived people
• Community participation essential in planning and implementation of village scheme. The Government acts as a facilitator to stand-by for required support.
• Social inclusion to benefit all with improved services (100% tap water connectivity)
• Willingness of community to shoulder 100% responsibility for O&M of village water supply system
• No withdrawal from the village or No drop out of the scheme. "Wait, Watch and Revisit until Headway Strategy" is adopted for ensuring Adequate, Regular and Safe Water to all, even to those who have shown less willingness.

Facilitating Empowerment

WASMO has adopted bottom-up approach in consonance with the spirit of the 73rd amendment of our Constitution. Processes for social mobilisation are continued to win trust of the people and obtain their willingness to join with the programme including partial sharing of the cost by them. Concerted efforts are made by the team of WASMO since introduction to the programme to provide all possible required support to the community. The stages for social processes in the programme are as follows:

• Programme introduction and need analysis
• Formation of Pani Samiti with consensus of people in Gram Sabha
• Participatory Rural Appraisal with community involvement
• Preparation of Village Action Plan by community
• Capacity building of the Pani Samiti and sharing of information with villagers
• Implementation of the Scheme by community
• Independent Financial Operations by Pani Samiti with guidance of WASMO
• Operation & Maintenance of System by Community

WASMO trusts in the ability of people and communities and their competency to make informed choices, assume responsibility, manage and resolve conflicts and deal with unforeseen future challenges. To deliver this empowerment, appropriate legal frameworks and institutional mechanism in the Pani Samiti at village level with a specific mandate are devised as under:

• Genuine people’s representation in Pani Samitis with adequate representation from women and marginalized sections of society
• Pani Samiti is a legal entity and enjoys powers to manage for improved village water supply services
• Accountability by making the process transparent and democratic.
• Capacity Building by promoting people’s awareness on water issues and developing skill of community in construction supervision, financial management, operation and maintenance of village water supply system and water quality surveillance.