With data at its core, this non-profit is working towards toilets in every home and slum rehabilitation

Shobha Kamble was a young bride when she came to live with her husband in Kadmvasti, an area in Kolhapur. There was no toilet in the house, and she had to use the community one, which was often dirty and unfit for use.

“I started avoiding eating and drinking water to minimise my visits to the common toilet. It was only when Shelter Associates stepped in and provided us with the means to build our own toilet, that I could finally eat to my heart’s content,” says Kamble.

The timely support from Shelter Associates also motivated her to join the non-profits’ team as a volunteer to convince others, especially women in the community, to build a toilet in their homes.

Kamble is part of the One Home, One Toilet initiative launched by Shelter Associates. Almost two decades ago, the initiative helped build over 27,000 toilets in seven cities of Maharashtra, raising the socio-economic conditions in urban slums while addressing the issues of sanitation, waste management, and menstrual hygiene.

The unique data-driven model was recently presented with the Aarohan Social Innovation Award for 2023 under the ‘women empowerment’ category.

Shelter Associates was started 30 years ago by Pratima Joshi after she gained several insights into the problems of development while studying ‘building design for developing countries’ at the Bartlett School of Architecture and Planning in London.

Joshi returned to India in the early Nineties and moved to Pune after marriage. She was keen to use her skills as an architect in the development sector. So, with a few like-minded architect friends, she started Shelter Associates in 1993 and registered it as a non-profit the following year.

For the first few years, the team worked on understanding the landscape in communities. They started their journey with communities in Pune and kept their projects small and strategic. In the late 1990s, the team started leveraging data and technology for poverty mapping.

Data was a missing piece then unlike what it is now, points out Joshi.

“But it was an important tool for any kind of effective intervention. We started doing spatial data using tech and showing cities how important it is,” she adds.

For almost 15 years, the team worked on understanding the development sector, especially in urban areas, deep diving into ground realities and communities in general.

Today, Shelter Associates has close to 50 members on its team and many volunteers on ground, working on various community projects.

A toilet in every home

When the Swacch Bharat Mission was launched, Joshi and her team learnt—from the data they had mapped in urban slum settlements—that sanitation was the most neglected service of all and a pressing concern as well.

“We found that water or electricity were not big issues. But the lack of home toilets was a direct affront to people’s dignity, especially for the women and girls.

“While we launched a few pilots with community toilets in 2000-2001, one thing became clear. Home toilets was really the best way to tackle sanitation issues, and a toilet inside the house meant better maintenance,” Joshi explains.

The One Home, One Toilet initiative was introduced in Sangli and Miraj between 2003 and 2005 as a participatory initiative.

Joshi believes that, to introduce services in urban settlements, it’s necessary to bring electorate members on board along with other stakeholders, ranging from the councillor and the municipal commissioner to the sanitary inspector.

The most important part of the process is community mobilisation and engagement with urban local bodies to lay and repair drainage lines.

The construction of toilets is a joint effort, with Shelter Associates providing the raw materials and the families contributing to the cost of construction.

“We also leveraged a lot of funding via CSR support and made material available at the doorsteps of people who showed interest. Also, because there was a financial buy-in, the families had the freedom to build and invest in their own finishes; so that they had nice toilets at home,” says Joshi.

Since then, the Pune Municipal Corporation has leveraged Shelter Associates’ model and impacted 40,000 families with home toilets.

When the non-profit launched its pilot in Sangli, Joshi remembers meeting a young woman who was finally able to invite her parents to come and stay with her because they had a toilet at home. She had moved from Pune where she had to defaecate in the open because there was no toilet at home or a community toilet nearby.

The One Home One Toilet initiative has also helped raise awareness around hygiene and waste management.

“We told people that if they didn’t dispose of solid waste properly, they have things backing up in the home toilet. We planned activities to raise awareness on waste segregation, that included games and street plays, and handheld people who were willing to compost waste,” says Joshi.

From slum to society

Slum rehabilitation is also at the core of Shelter Associates’ work for the urban poor.

After implementing three major projects in Pune and Sangli-Miraj, the non-profit is now in the process of rehabilitating 80 families in the Bondre Nagar slum, located on the edge of the city of Kolhapur. At the behest of the community, it has intervened to design a holistic housing solution and engage its residents in the entire process.

“They have now come with a design where people have agreed to share land, and everyone has the same area with all designs conforming to town planning norms. They have registered a cooperative society and appointed a contractor. Each family will get close to a 400-sqt built-up area that is well-lit and ventilated. Hopefully, in nine months, they can move into their own homes,” says Joshi.

Data for effective development

Joshi emphasises that data has become an important instrument for community engagement.

Shelter Associates trains people from slum communities in collecting data and reading maps. This data empowers them to make decisions, making them partners in the process of growth. Data also brings urban local bodies, the community, and civil society together for greater good.

She explains, “We use data creatively to have a fair representation of people across the community. For example, on the map, we divide houses in groups of 100 or 200, and from each of these pockets, we try to have a volunteer. A lot of young women have started volunteering, and the idea is to leave a bunch of people empowered by the time you move out.”

Another area where Shelter Associates has seen success with data is in the use of digital addresses. For thousands of families residing in a slum, where the name of the slum, the ward, or the survey number is shared, reaching out to a family is a nightmare.

The non-profit partnered with Google in 2019 and worked on a couple of pilots in Pune wherein digital addresses were issued to every household.

“This was leveraged for online services such as Amazon and Swiggy, postal services, and LPG connection,” says Joshi.

Apart from digital addressing, spatial mapping has also helped community members in different ways. 

Joshi recalls an instance where a manhole was overflowing in a settlement. Since there were hundreds of chambers, it was difficult to get the local officer to come to the precise manhole. A girl from the settlement shared the digital address on WhatsApp to the officer, and the issue was resolved immediately.

Shelter Associates is keen to extend digital addressing across India, beyond Maharashtra.

“Data has been the differentiator between Shelter Associates and other NGOs. But we feel unless data gets institutionalised in governments, we won’t be able to solve many issues. We are continuing with our One Home, One Toilet scheme and are also looking at housing that requires a lot of commitment,” says Joshi.