Introduction

The poor bacteriological quality of drinking water, immensity of water related diseases and plenty of sunshine received were considered as positive factors to introduce SODIS. Apart from North Western, Eastern and dry part of the Uva province, COSI selected two more organizations from the dry part of the North Central and Southern provinces.

Several Local organizations involved with SODIS project in central and southern part of the country & the participation in northern east and west is fully by international organizations. Traveling and organizing the training programmes in northern Sri Lanka was easier as the security conditions have come back to normal due to the peace process. The involvement of the schools in SODIS was promising & was taken as a better way of promoting since they adopt the method with a good understanding of the technicality.

Treating water before drinking was not common in most of the places. In some places, people said that they drink boiled water but they were not aware on how to boil water in order to destroy the germs. People were more concerning about the taste, odour and the clearness of water and not much aware of the bacteriological contamination and its consequences. Also, some people saw additional benefits of using SODIS such as reducing cooking time and the cost for fuel/fire wood.

A target of 5000 SODIS beneficiaries was set at the beginning of the project considering a 2-year project period. Unfortunately, the rainy season spread over the last 3 months of the year in all parts of the country and the promotional field activities were re-scheduled accordingly. The rain seized by January 2003 the field activities were commenced only after that in all the project areas. It was a better opportunity for all the organizations to meet together in February 2003 at the mid-term review meeting & also to get the views and advices by the SANDEC representative. The proposed targets were reviewed & new targets were set in March 2003. COSI suggested a target of 1010 SODIS regular users by June 2003. This target was achieved without any difficulty by June & progressed better afterwards.

In addition to the above targets & partner organizations, another organization working in the Estate sector started SODIS with their small-scale water supply schemes in Tea Estates in NuwaraEliya district. Further, several units of NWS&DB (National water Supply & Drainage Board) introduced SODIS in their rural water supply projects. For all these organizations, the training and training/promotional material were supplied by COSI.