Facing media to campaign together

Together we can make success was the ending phrase we departed from EWP Campaign Planning Meeting. We received call from one of our member organization Guthi that they are organizing a media interaction program on water and sanitation on February 15,2009. We were given a space for sharing EWP Campaign for promoting water and sanitation services in Nepal.

The interaction was initiated with powerful presentation of UN Habitat representative who shared difficult circumstances of the country in the arena of water and sanitaiton. He also shared some of the best practices like Community Led Sanitation and School Led Sanitation becoming success cases in the communities. The presenation from the goverment focused on the need for proper coordination and avoiding duplication of the efforts. Then came our turn for sharing the EWP!

Staring eyes of media was there and they were eager to hear what EWP is all about? I made them clear that we will not focusing more on what we did as other presenters but focus more on what we will be doing in future. I presented them on the scenario where 14 million people have no access to sanitation and 7 million people have no acess to basic water supply. I shared the contexts where a sister adviced her younger sister not to drink water because there was no toilet in school. I emphasized that there was a radical change in the political scenario where 13,000 people were killed in a decade but why the political parties were silent when there is almost equal number of killings of children each year due to water borne diseases was the concern I highlighted most. I also shared the international calls of global framework for action together with our overaching calls of establishing water and sanitaiton as constitutional right and ensuring commitment of SACOSAN III declaration. I briefed on the specific demands of the year where we highlighted more on sustaining budget growth, ensuring gender friendly sanitation services, providing hygine focal units in concerned ministries and endorsement of Master Plan of Sanitation and Urban Water and Sanitation Policy. I requested to join hand together for our campaign and that was also reiterated by Anil Staphit from Guthi who coordinated the program. There was participation of all WAN Advocacy and Research Team as well as communication with Steve and Jennean gave me more strength to face the media.

I always think what could have been better? I felt that meeting the media with our concrete action plans would have been easier to face the media. We were still in the process of finalizing our action plans so could not speak more on our way forward in terms of actions. May be it could be the agenda for next media meet?