The Status Assessment Survey (SAS), of about 70,000 households re-connected Gram Vikas with the villages which had set up water and sanitation systems with our assistance.

The Status Assessment Survey (SAS), of about 70,000 households across 1170 villages, rolled out in May 2018. An exercise with few parallels, the survey aims to help Gram Vikas re-establish contact with all the villages we have worked with, assess the status of the infrastructure, governance processes and gaps, and gauge the interest of the villages to continue the partnership. 

We constituted a special team with newly selected volunteers, as the core, with few senior staff supporting the interface with the local Gram Vikas teams and planning the schedules and logistics for the survey. About 50 young men and women from villages that Gram Vikas has worked with in the past, were selected and trained for carrying out the survey. 

The SAS consists of two phases. In the first phase, the survey collects village-level data on the status of the village institutions, financial mechanisms and the piped water supply system. The second phase involves household level data-collection on the status of household sanitation facilities and behavioural patterns related to usage.  

The SAS team completed the village-level survey in 10 districts, where local Gram Vikas offices were in place to facilitate the process. The team used M-Water App (www.mwater.co) for data collection and preliminary analysis.

The first phase of the survey followed this process.

• Bringing on board the village communities by the local Gram Vikas staff 
• Passing of resolution by the Village Water and Sanitation Committee to facilitate the survey
• Conduct of the survey by the team of volunteers using a pre-tested questionnaire schedule including photographic evidence of key information

In the first phase, the team contacted 897 villages, in 279  gram panchayats of 69 blocks, in 10 districts. Of these, the team completed SAS in 846 villages which provided formal assent. 

The findings from the village level survey will help Gram Vikas formulate village-specific strategies for taking up work under the Gram Vikas Decade V programme framework. 

The survey, a significant activity during the year, re-connected Gram Vikas with the villages which had set up water and sanitation systems with our assistance. The results from the SAS assessment will form the basis of our work in the Water and Sanitation and Hygiene focus areas in the coming years. 

For the villages that completed the first phase, the second phase of SAS – the household level data-collection – will begin in April 2019.