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Mission Statement:

CURE's mission is to achieve three goals; reconnected urban societies that take informed decisions to ensure sustainable urban development;

strengthened local agencies with capacities for participatory community development and real evidence built from the ground up for effective service

delivery.

Vision Statement:

CURE India envisions a world where all people are equal and must get access to an equal level of services. CURE believes in demonstrating several

integrative models of sustainable urban development where the poor are enabled to build home toilets and houses, connect to potable drinking

water, get access to waste management services, harvest rain water and be water resilient and improve their living environments.

Foreword

As I write the foreword for the annual report of 2018-19, it is my great pleasure to mention that we can now look to a new sustainable agenda of resilient people, resilient communities - the power to envision the future of the community and build its resilience together with the community members. We realized quite early that whatever we do, success is founded on partnership. Ever since then, our approach has always been communitarian - working with the community that adapts to changes as an ongoing process within the ecosystems on which it depends, to become resilient.

CURE is a not-for-profit development organization, established in 2001 by a group of urbanists , with a vision to create an enabling environment for pro-poor urban and social policy through inclusive planning and governance, multi stakeholder partnerships, institutional capacity building and urban reform. Four pillars of CURE’s work include - pro-policy advocacy, implementing comprehensive and sustainable slum upgrading solutions, development of community-based information systems on a GIS platform and research. CURE believes in communities and partnerships. It strives to deliver to the poor an equal level of services, in a connected and comprehensive manner so as to build urban resilience. CURE implements innovative slum upgrading projects in an effort at demonstrating to cities and capacitating them to unthink and de-engineer policy and solutions.

CURE has been from 2015, collaborating workwith the East Delhi Municipal Corporation to converge large amount of spatial and non-spatial data and used technologies like GIS, and web based applications for documenting, analysing and visualizing city infrastructure systems by creating the SANMAN (SANitation MANager) application. In the process the agency was better able to appreciate the urban dynamics on real-time basis, and was able to undertake systemic analysis of the gaps and demands, and prepare development programs and investment plans. The immense success of SANMAN led to its replication in 10 other cities. Buoyed with this success, we in CURE are now engaged in scaling up and fine tuning SANMAN into URBMAN (URBan MANager) to become a multi-variable decision making tool for people, particularly poor communities, to voluntarily contribute real-time data for Urban Local Bodies to better manage service delivery ranging from water and sanitation to health service delivery, spatial evaluation for education services and infrastructure, human resource management and allocation through a user-friendly, universally accessible and less costly platform. We sincerely hope that this becomes an unique experience in digital partnership between citizens and city authorities.

Similarly, on the WATSAN front, CURE is not only contributing in preparing the Agra Water Resilience Plan but also realizing its goals by partnering with the communities to create, manage and maintain community based rain water harvesting systems and revitalize defunct water-bodies. This has opened up new avenues for CURE to collaborate with other cities and communities and increasingly contribute to

the recently launched Government of India’s flagship program, i.e., Jal Shakti Abhiyan.

As we move on, we at CURE reiterate our pledge to continue to work together with our partners to usher in a new era of justice, equity and resilience.

Dr. Renu Khosla Director

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Water and Sanitation

To setup improved and integrational WASH services to poor communities that

are innovative, scalable, sustainable and community-led to ensure equality,

better health and enhanced productivity for sustained poverty reduction

Number served by water projects: 371,975

Number served by sanitation projects: 3,550

Communitarian approach drives the core strategies of Centre for Urban and Regional Excellence (CURE), hence the return of investment is also measured in making resilient communities that drive their own success stories with little boost from CURE’s innovative engineering designs and methods that ensure comprehensive and sustainable ecological solutions and integrate people within the city's fabric. Partnering with like-minded donor organizations, other agencies, government departments and with involvement of community CURE worked in places where the need was greatest to bring dignity in lives of people.

In the year 2018-19 lives of more than Four Hundred Thousand people were touched in six states of India.

The CURE programmes in the last year were the following:

Slum upgrading

To develop, community-led, integrated inclusive and equitable models for slum upgrading and sustainable livelihoods, capable of replication and scale

Health

To encourage and sustain community partnerships to create awareness

about social determinants of health and influence decisions in

implementation of public programmes.

Number served: 7,011

Housing

The objective is to develop designs for low-income houses to improve and optimise health, quality of life of people with minimum cost and environmental impact.

Number served: 3,650

Education

To increase knowledge of confronting upcoming challenges related to climatic changes and its impact on urban informal settlements through formal education among students and professionals.

Number served: 19,635

Environment

To promote community-managed sustainable clean healthy environment in urban slum settlements and schools by creating basic water, sanitation, housing facilities and waste management in urban areas

Community level meeting on sanitation system in

Vivekanad Basti, Delhi Stakeholder meeting during Swatchta Pakhada at East

Delhi

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SLUM UPGRADATION

Life of dignity using power of group

Sheela had just sold the 70th Kg of mushroom grown in their leprosy colony this season by women who had made a self-help group (SHG) to gain meaningful livelihood, after quitting their previous occupation of begging in front of temples and crossings. She remembers how things have changed since CURE started working in their leprosy colony; how their lives of obscurity matured into confidence and brought dignity and happiness into each one of their lives. Sheela recalled how they had drawn their pathetic living conditions - filth with pools of dirty water everywhere - on CURE’s charts during discussions and arrived at reasons behind them. CURE workers had motivated them to form SHGs to change their conditions. As SHG members they spoke to the government to redo their toilets and washrooms, to make them wheel chair accessible and differently abled-friendly. After initial hiccups, the government officials started listening to their problems and along with CURE’s engineers designed the washrooms and toilets with ventilation, easy to close/open taps, anti-skid floor tiles, handlebars and ramps. Since then the women’s SHG was working on maintenance of the toilets and the government decided to provide a sum to the SHG for maintenance of these toilets.

Their journey towards better life continued as an enabling environment was facilitated by CURE to develop better landscaping, RWH, street lighting and playground for children in their community. The care givers and family members of the people affected by disease who also stayed with them faced taboos and were rendered as untouchables in the society. There were limited livelihood options for them; they were only considered fit for cleaning jobs or begging. However, the confidence they got from talking to government and other officials and managing amenities in their colony, gave them the strength to look for respectable sources of livelihood. They decided to get into cultivating mushrooms and flowers in their colony. Some of them got together to make cleaning products like phenyl and liquid handwashing soaps and developed market linkages. Sheela’s group today sells 70 Kgs of mushroom in a single season, which is very significant to Sheela’s family and to the colony residents.

Donors supporting this theme: Adelphi in partnership with GIZ, Tata Trust

Achievements of Slum Upgradation projects (2018-19)

• In Bhubaneshwar ancillary support was provided last year to the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) related activities of the pilot phase of land rights to slum dwellers and this year (May 2018) the slum dwellers got their land rights certificates. Thereafter, for designing houses for them, CURE sensitized the urban planners to the importance of community sensitive designs and the use of participatory process.

• CURE used improved technology and trained key members of government’s Technical Agency in operating open-source GIS software such as QGIS, which gave them access the database being created by the consultants and better guide them in the mapping process. GIS maps were shown to the slum dwellers, which made the process both participatory and accurate.

• CURE prepared a strategy note for government’s new initiative to rehabilitate transgenders and beggars in the city of Bhubaneswar, along with a map showing locations of major begging spots, areas of operation of transgenders and shelter homes in the city. The strategy note stressed the importance of partnering with local NGOs and organisations of transgenders.

• CURE is supporting Rourkela Municipal Corporation (MC) to create an inclusive, resilient and SMART Rourkela. The project focusses on developing models on water, sanitation and livelihood in slums and low-income settlements that are sustainable and scalable by the MC. At the leprosy colony, CURE has started rain water harvesting (RWH), making barrier-free toilets for the special need of differently abled people, livelihood projects from composting. Mapping geographic coordinates of toilets, bins, water supply line, sewerage line, school, Hospitals and Open Spaces/parks for the SANMAN is being collected through survey, which analyses gaps and helps in service delivery.

• CURE is supporting and strengthening Smart City Missions (Bhubaneswar in Odisha and Kochi in Kerala) to develop sustainable smart city projects of government.

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Water and Sanitation

Empowered community changes behaviour

CURE started working in Kalibari camp, located adjacent to Central Government Employees Residential Colony, near the General Post Office in Central Delhi, since 2015 March under the USAID PASS project to improve access to water and sanitation. Like all other projects CURE first conducted an initial baseline survey to record and analyze various parameters of water, sanitation hygiene and health, and then started discussions with the community to spatially understand the resources and assets in the settlement, Various PLA tools like transect walk and resource mapping, were used to involve the community in taking charge of development of their area. The community was very responsive and helped in narrowing down the major issues in the settlement before ranking them according to the urgency of action required. The three identified issues were:

1. Lack of access to potable water: There were only 4 standposts for potable water and 2 hand pumps catering to the needs in the entire settlement which has about 350 households. There were regular delays and fights while filling water. The average time to collect water was about 2 hours from the standposts. People used to travel to other places to collect water, which meant more time spent per household.

2. Inadequate capacity and dilapidated condition of the two CTCs: Initially people used to defecate in the open because of the poor condition of the 2 CTCs present in the settlement. There was fear of adverse health issues among the community because of lack of water in the CTCs, which severely affected its maintenance.

3. Unsanitary conditions due to lack of or poorly designed drains: Transit walks had shown open drains with improper slope within the settlement. The dirty water from these open drains spilled out and flooded the streets. This was the cause of major health concern for the community.

CURE recognized community’s willingness to work towards eliminating existing issues. Women came forward to form groups to share their concerns and demands and represent their settlement at various government offices. The resource map was used by the community to negotiate with the local government to get infrastructure service delivery in the settlement. The government officials initially equivocated the issues but with constant follow ups and letters submitted by the community following changes were brought to the settlement:

Water: number of standposts increased from 4 to 24 bringing the average number of households per standpost from 67.5 to 28. Of this, 25 households have their own water connections.

Sanitation: Both the CTCs were renovated with the total seats increased from 14 to 28. A new CTC was constructed with design incorporations like the ramps, handicap seat, ladies and gents hand washes and urinals. Even 20 households constructed toilets their houses. In 2017 NDMC certified Kalibari basti as open defecation free settlement.

Drains: 250 mm diameter RCC drains were laid in the settlement at a depth of 2 feet in place of open drains. The new drain pipes would ensure efficient flow of the grey water, proper cleaning of drain chambers and reduction in bad odour. This will have a direct impact on the health and reduction of diseases in the community.

CURE conducted intense behaviour change communication sessions in the community to empower the community for achieving these results.

Donors supporting this theme: USAID, Moody’s Analytics, SELAVIP

Community level event to declare Open Defecation Free community Community interaction to create awareness on impacts of open

defecation

Achievements of water and sanitation projects

• Work with school students and their parents in urban slum settlements on water resilience, sanitation and related issues of health continues. CURE’s Rain Water Harvesting (RWH) projects in 2 schools of East Municipal Development Corporation (EMDC) had resulted into increased school attendance and enrolment besides clean potable water available for 800 people

• Two sites within Tajganj – Ambedkar Bagichi and Sheikh Bulakhi, with about 1600 people have been identified for developing open defecation free (ODF) communities in Agra. Poor households have been linked with the SBM toilet subsidy scheme for construction of individual household toilets. New sewer lines have been connected to the city’s existing trunk sewer line.

• Improved water and sanitation structures at Shamli Nagar Palika Parishad (SNPP) with CURE’s base maps; mapping of existing infrastructure like Public toilets, Community toilets, waste disposal locations for SANMAN and documentation of existing human resource for waste management with NPP was also prepared for SNPP.

• Optimum utilisation of water using channelization of wastewater through DEWATS

• Better waste management at Dharamshala using CURE’s SANMAN base maps and analysis of existing scenario.

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ENVIRONMENT:

“I could not believe that we can actually store rain and use that water later” reminisces Rinku, the young boy of 12 years who has seen his mother toil hard to get water every day. He and his classmates questioned their teacher unbelievably when she educated the students about rain water harvesting (RWH) tanks in their school compound and the safety measures that are needed. None of these kids could believe that they could drink rainwater, stored in the tanks at their school, only by opening a tap, even during hot summers. Can this be done at home, Rinku wondered because he and his friends had spent precious hours filling water with their mothers and siblings while they wanted to study or play.

Tedi Bagia area in Ambedkar Nagar, where Rinku’s school is present, is not connected to the city’s piped water service. People extract ground water for all uses either by immersing bore wells or buying ground water. The submersible pump/bore-well in his school too had stopped working. The school depended majorly on one hand pump for all water needs of drinking, cooking mid-day meals and flushing toilets.

The RWH system at Tedi Bagia School, constructed by CURE, consists of 2 underground tanks with a capacity of 80,000 liters and 35,000 liters. The idea was to catch every drop of water that was likely to fall on the roof. The tanks are connected to the rooftops through a system of pipes and drains. The overflow of the tanks is channelized to a common groundwater recharge pit. An opening is provided to take water out and for cleaning the tank. Rain water is now used by 320 children, teachers and school staff members. It is used in mid-day meal and drinking. Students fill their bottles from water kiosk. The food taste has changed; it takes lesser time to cook the food. Gastric issues of teachers and school staff members are reduced. Even parents reviewed that the RWH water is fit for drinking. School is saving Rs. 1200 per month from purchasing tanker water for their use.

Rinku has told his parents about RWH. He says ‘God gives rain free of cost but we waste it”. Initially, his parents did not agree with this important lesson that Rinku had learnt about environment and its conservation. However, after a few meetings in their area with CURE workers they understood the concept and installed a RWH facility with a filter capacity 20 litres at their home at a cost of 300 rupees. Couple of other families too accepted the initiative. Availability of water in their homes inspired few more and today Tedhi Bagia has 64 RWH systems at individual homes.

Project objectives and important output achievements of the project for this year

Few other Achievements of other Environment projects

• CURE increased utilization of clean environmental strategies with its water and sanitation projects by channelizing rainwater for drinking and other necessities. This cleaned the area from sludge formation in schools and other urban settlements

• In Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) activities CURE built the capacities of staff of East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC), updated qualitative data on public toilets in the area, prepared IEC material on use of toilets and dustbins. Cure also worked with the government to engage citizens in various cleanliness drives of EDMC.

• Similarly for North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NrDMC) CURE had built the capacity of its staff to manage data last year. This year the EDMC model was replicated here. The RWAs were involved in source segregation, proper waste management methods and process and composting in Narela. CURE also developed BCC material for the same.

• USAID supported project in Tajganj, Agra is continuing to work with Agra Municipal Corporation to achieve open defecation free communities and attain good results on the service level benchmark under Clean India Mission guidelines.

Project objectives and important output achievements of the project for this year

Donors supporting this theme: London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Moody’s Analytics, USAID.

Nukad Natak under Jal Shakti Mission for RWH at Shamli RWH System at identified community in Agra

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Drawing Competition in Vivekanand Busti, Delhi on Cleanliness

Donors : John Snow Research and Training Institute., EU and DUK, Krems, Moody’s Analytics, Kailash Satyarthi Children’s Foundation

EDUCATION

Implementation: CURE with Danube University Krems, Austria, EU and 6 other partner organizations in India is engaged in a ‘Building Resilient Urban Communities’ (BReUCom) program. It is attempted to pilot five new courses on urban resilience in existing curricula for graduate students, develops 20 new Professional Development Program modules for professionals from different backgrounds and introduce 10 modules for internship with NGOs in India and Europe/

For more details please click: https://www.breucom.eu

Using participatory approach, design solution were developed to

address damp, heat, cold, pests etc. at Savda Gherva

Project objectives and important output achievements of

the project for this year

HOUSING

Implementation: Partnering with London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and University College London, CURE developed solutions for building households in Savda Gherva in Delhi employing low carbon materials, climate-friendly and with low health hazards like dampness and mosquitoes.

Building the houses was a participatory process where community’s desires and constraints were addressed in designs and implementation. Constructions of 5 houses have started, which is also capacity building of masons and contractors, as construction is significantly different from the current practices.

Project objectives and important output achievements of the project for this year

HEALTH

Implementation: This year CURE addressed the public policies and urban planning from a health equity perspective. It created, supported and empowered community partnerships for citizen driven issues that are social determinants of health (falling within health, environment, urban planning, WASH, education, and other areas. This project was implemented in Indore (Madhya Pradesh) in partnership with John Snow, Inc.

Residents of Savda Gherwa discussed and shared health constraints in their area with CURE architects to support them in designing and building low-health hazard houses

Rainwater harvesting at schools and community in Tedhi Bagia Ambedkar Nagar are being monitored by the individuals and school committee. The RWH systems continue to provide better health outcomes in school and community.

Project objectives and important output achievements of the project for this year

Cleanliness drive in Edigah (Agra)

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Use of SMART TECHNOLOGIES

CURE has built a planning information system to aid local bodies to attain their goals under SBM. Called the SANMAN (Sanitary Manager), it has a collection of smart geospatial tools to provide automated solutions. For example, it makes intelligent decisions to locate new public toilets and allocate resources for their effective management. It also helps optimization of manpower for efficient waste management in an area. SANMAN generates a range of maps on GIS platform, after input of spatial and non-spatial data, which enables the administrator to assess current situation, shortfall, future requirement and resources needed for improvement of the current situation.

After piloting this tool successfully in EDMC, CURE used it in other cities like Agra, Mathura, NOIDA, Shamli, Dharamshala, Rourkela, Bhubaneshwar, Ganjam and Konark.

North Delhi - CTC Analysis North Delhi – Location of CTC

Behaviour Change Communication initiative at schools in East Delhi

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Collabrations • Director CURE along with few students from University of Calgary attended

a workshop where discussion was held at the World Bank and other key development partners, research institutes, multi-lateral agencies, private developers, technical and academic experts and policy think-tanks currently engaged in India’s urban housing sector on integrated solutions to address affordable housing challenges. This workshop was also held in May 2018.

• INCLUDe, a network of 7 NGOs working on urban community development initiatives, partnered with NFI to deepen the knowledge and skills of the NFI’s NGO partners to create capacity for people-centred participatory development. The capacity building initiative was implemented in two interactive sessions interspersed with experiential, on-ground mentored work.

• A potential-collaborative meeting was held with Dr. Anil Namdeo from University of New Castle, who is investigating exposure to smoke and air pollution especially for communities which use biomass for cooking in Tanzania and India. The CURE team, working with Dr. Emily from UCLL were designing dwellings and other interventions, which aimed to reduce exposure to indoor air pollution, heat, cold, damp and mosquitoes.

• Mr. Zach Dell and his team from University of South California works on a toilet technology and a treatment system (anaerobic digesters). They shared their final designs on May 2018 and discussed the future plans for implementation. Three settlements in CURE’s working area were visited to identify possible locations for effective implementation of the treatment system along with a hydrophobic toilet (requiring less maintenance).

• CURE Director shared CURE experience in the round-table meeting conducted by NFI post their study on “Gender Responsive Budgeting in Swachh Bharat Mission: Focus on Access to Public

Toilets for Women in India” with the support of UN Women study. The study was conducted in four cities - Ajmer (Rajasthan); Anantpur (Andhra Pradesh); Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh); and Bhubaneswar (Odisha) to analyze the gender responsiveness of the SBM (Urban) guidelines in terms of policy, budget allocation and implementation of the public toilets component. Following the completion of the study, consultations were held with the respective Municipal Corporations.

• CURE Director participated as a panelist in the Expert Consultation on Integrating Gender into Sanitation at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in August 2018

• Mr. Jason Gale from Bloomberg/ Newsroom visited Savda Ghevra and Sapheda Basti in September 2018 and covered stories of women impacted by SBM.

PRESENTATIONS • Two presentations were made by the Director CURE, ‘The business of building sustainable livelihoods with the Urban Poor’ and ‘Urban

Sanitation and Water Resilience: Making Things Equal’ at Newcastle University as a measure to strengthen international research collaborations and bring focus on Sustainable Development Goals related to water, sanitation, livelihoods and housing. These presentations were made to All Party Parliamentary Group.

• Considering CURE’s water and sanitation work in Agra, Director CURE participated in a series of lectures, ‘The future of the Taj depends on the Future of Agra: Finding a way forward’ in September 2018.

Publications this year:

• Participatory Action Research as a Framework for Transdisciplinary Collaboration: A Pilot Study on Healthy, Sustainable, Low-Income Housing in Delhi, India

• Building Water Resilience ( A practitioner’s Guide for Community-Based Rain water Harvesting)

• Toilet Portfolio

• PUSH Project: A behavioural Science Approach to Urban Sanitation,

• Approach to Urban Sanitation, India

• Agency, Assets & Infrastructure gendered household decision making in Savda Ghevra

• CURE “Samvaad” Newsletter

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CURE Mentors

A team of 70 persons from various sectors; community development, architecture, engineering- water and sanitation, urban planning, economics, finance, GIS, MIS, environmentalist, etc led by Director, Dr Renu Khosla. More than 70% staff is present in field areas spread over urban slums in Delhi, Agra, Rourkela, Bhubaneswar and NOIDA

Abdul Rahim

Ashwajt Singh

Chetan Vaidya

Dr. Dinesh Mehta

Gangadhar Jha

Jasmine Singh Madhav Raman

Kaustav Kanti

Meera Mehta

Nabaroon

Bhattacharjee

Neeraj Jain

Rattan Chhabra

Rolee Aranya

Tanya Singh

Usha Rana

“We work as a bridge between the community and facilities needed by them They know what they want and

we have the know-how – scientific methods, strategies and government departments etc.”

….Community Worker of CURE

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Financial Details

Income Expenses

5,95,44,667 5,85,55,485

Comparison between Income and Expenses in 2018-19

Graph showing % amount received from donors –

international and national

99,86,674

4,80,24,760

15,33,233 DomesticDonors

Int'lDonors-FCRA

Int'lDonors-FCRAexempt

Expenses on SALAProgram Management, Other

program services, management of programs and

administration

3,70,20,890

1,82,96,822

32,37,773

Programservices

Management

Administrative

List of Donors

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INCLUDe (Indian NGOs for Community-led Urban Habitat Development) is a network and platform formed by deeply

committed NGOs to advocate in favour of slums and low-income settlements and for nurturing the next generation of NGOs. Our achievements this year:

INCLUDE represents Indian NGOs that are deeply committed to participatory development with the aim of to build local capacities of communities, cities and organizations to work together and create a more inclusive framework that leverages state resources and programs. Its network includes SPARC, MHT, Shelter Associates, South Asia HomeNet, Habitat for Humanity, India, YUVA and CURE. CURE is also its Secretariat. Mentor partners include research institutions and Think Tanks such as NIUA, HSMI, UN Habitat, UNDP, The World Bank, USAID and GIZ.

The network has embarked on compiling 7 case studies to be brought out in a compendium on experiences and evidences from the ground. These cases will be finalized and documented in detail in 2019. To take the INCLUDe agenda ahead, CURE and SPARC have been sharing INCLUDe’s vision and purpose with organizations like NIUA and AFD (Agence Francaise de Development) to explore ways of potential collaborations. The network is also working on designing select policy briefs in an effort to improve participatory processes within urban programmes.

In June 2018, INCLUDe trained the NGO partners of National Foundation of India (NFI). The capacity building initiative was implemented in two interactive sessions interspersed with experiential, on-ground mentored work. It concluded with mentored practice, guided by NFI in collaboration with SPARC and CURE.

This network includes SPARC, MHT, Shelter Associates, South Asia HomeNet, Habitat for Humanity, India, YUVA and CURE. CURE is also its Secretariat. Mentor partners include research institutions and Think Tanks such as NIUA, HSMI, UN Habitat, UNDP, The World Bank, USAID and GIZ.

To know more about our programs and support us please visit us at: https://cureindia.org/

To meet beneficiaries of our program and staff please contact us between Monday to Friday (1000 hours to 1830 hours) at:

Office address: 4, Second Floor, Zamrudpur Commercial Complex, Greater Kailash, New Delhi 110048, India

Phone: +9111 29242272

Write to us at:info@cureindia.org

@CURE_INDIA @CUREINDIA Centre for Urban and Regional Excellence India @centreforurbanandregionalexcellence

All photos belong to CURE India

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