April 4, 2012

Honorable Prime Minister Dr. Baburam Bhattarai felicitated the Country Director of CARE
Nepal amidst a function organized in his home district –Gorkha. The PM appreciated CARE
Nepal for its contribution to the overall development of Manakamana VDC in Gorkha district.
Dr.Bhattarai had been to Gorkha to attend 4 different events out of which he marked the
ODF declaration as the most important and symbolic one as it provided impetus to government’s
development priorities. He stated that it would also support recently announced the
National Volunteer Campaign 2012 to increase the participation of people in social and economic
development activities in the country. The government had launched the “One Village
One Pond, one house one toilet Program” to improve the living standard of communities
in the country and provide access to safe drinking water, sanitation and irrigation. Dr
Bhattarai stated that such development efforts could not be carried out by the government
alone and support from non-government agencies is important.
Over five hundred people were present on the occasion and CARE was the only INGO organization
acknowledged for its contribution. The ambassador of India to Nepal His Excellency
Jayant Prasad was also present on the occasion to inaugurate the health post built by
the Indian government in the same VDC.

*CARE has been working in the district for over 20 years through various projects. It has led
sanitation campaigns, conducted awareness raising activities, built infrastructures like health
posts, schools, bridges, foot trails among others. Currently it is implementing the Community
Support Program (with the funding support from DFID) in the district. The event was
organized to declare Manakamana VDC as an “Open defecation free area” which is a core
component of CSP to promote sanitation in the communities. Nepal aims to achieve basic
sanitation by 2017. However, the status of sanitation in Nepal is poor. It is reported that lack
of sanitation facility kills 13,000 children less than five years of age every year in Nepal.
One of the reasons for the poor sanitation situation is also the practice of defecating in open
places.
There are numerous obstacles to achieve the national target on sanitation. Promoting sanitation
requires commitment not only from the state, but also from society, family and individual
level.
CARE/CSP is working in water and sanitation sector and promoting CLTS approaches
for sustainable sanitation through which it has been successful in completely eliminating
open defecation from a lot of areas, and Manakamana VDC is one such example.