School WASH retrofits cross 100 sites across Krishna and Guntur
SEARCH Communications · 14 February 2024 · 4 min read
When the Krishna School WASH Retrofit programme began in 2019, the durability problem was the binding constraint: school sanitation programmes in India are notorious for toilets that get built and stop working within a year. Five years on, 91 of the first 96 sites still pass the quarterly audit — and the programme has now crossed 100 retrofits in Krishna and Guntur districts together.
🚿
Press release · SEARCH Communications
The hundredth retrofit was handed over this week to a Mandal Parishad school in Krishna district. The school management committee received a maintenance fund seeded at ₹25,000 — the same standing endowment every site in the programme begins with — and the student hygiene club ran its first cleanliness audit a fortnight after handover.
Why the durability holds
The retrofit model treats the maintenance institution as the deliverable, not the toilet block. Every school management committee gets a seeded fund and quarterly auditing training; every cohort of students elects a hygiene club that runs monthly water-quality and cleanliness checks; every site is followed up at quarterly intervals by SEARCH staff for at least two years post-handover.
100 schools retrofitted across Krishna and Guntur districts
24,200 students with access to dignified, gender-segregated facilities
91 of the first 96 sites still passing quarterly cleanliness audits
The next 30 sites in the pipeline are funded through a combination of CSR partnerships, NABARD support, and the maintenance-fund mechanism the programme has formalised over five years.
