National Conference on Social Innovations for Improving Urban Sanitation (SIIUS): Lessons for Scaling-up

PRIA and Centre for Policy Research (CPR) are organising a daylong National Conference on Social Innovations for Improving Urban Sanitation: Lessons for Scaling-up at The Theatre, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi on 14th December, 2016.

The conference will highlight various social innovations by civil society organisations (CSOs) derived from local contexts to improve access to sanitation. The idea is to discuss the successes and challenges of each initiative, and explore whether these can potentially be scaled-up to address the sanitation challenges in India. Besides highlighting the lessons learnt from these experiences, the conference will explore prerequisites and the role of various stakeholders in mainstreaming and scaling-up innovations within the current policy, programme and institutional governance framework in the urban sanitation context.

There will be three technical sessions during the conference.

Session I Equity and Social Change - Central to improving urban sanitation
This session will explore the trajectory of the movement to protect the dignity of the sanitation workers, highlight the core issues of the workers and explore the methods applied through social innovations in order to mobilise sanitation workers involved in varied occupations to raise a strong voice for dignity, equity and social justice

Session II Beyond Public Networks- Social innovation underlying technical solutions
This session will discuss the social innovations by the CSOs derived from the ‘local’ context, highlight the challenges and successes of different initiatives in engaging with the community as the essential ingredient for adoption of improved technology and service modes

Session III Scaling-up innovation for change
This session will identify key issues posed by the government and donors for up scaling social innovations. It will deliberate on the key concerns of the government and donors when engaging with the CSOs on scaling-up these innovations. This session will deliberate on the engagement of the community with the urban local bodies (ULBs), interorganisational collaboration, and the issues and challenges of building networks at the national and international level

The conference will see participation from government officials, donors, civil society organisations (CSOs) and academia.