2.  Drinking Water & Sanitation Program (March 2016-November 2021) :

TSS has implemented a four years project entitled "Maternal & Child Health Initiatives through Drinking Water & Sanitation" since March 2016 ending until March 2020. This project is funded by World Neighbors Canada Society, B.C., Canada and Global Affairs Canada/DFATD, an agency of the government of Canada. Many other Canadian individual supporters and organizations (Rotary Club of Aldergrove, Rotary Club of Kamloops & Rotary Club of Oliver) are also involved in this project's internal fund generation.

The overall objective of this program is to improve the health of mothers and young children and thus contribute to reducing maternal and child mortality, through assistance with village and households scale infrastructures mainly gravity-fed drinking water systems and household toilet construction. It is expected to support communities to construct 21 small gravity-fed drinking water system that will benefit to about 525 households by the end of four years. In addition, a total of 4,200 families will be supported for the construction of water-sealed toilets at their houses by the end of the project period.

The Government of Nepal has adopted a Sanitation & Hygiene Master Plan 2011. The goal of the Master Plan is to attain universal access to improved sanitation by 2017 for better hygiene, health and environment. For the last 14 years, TSS has been working in toilet promotion program and already helped about 20,000 households before the devastating earthquake.

Originally, the target of toilet program was planned on yearly basis. However, this target was revised in order to attain universal access to sanitation by 2017, adopted by the Government of Nepal. Therefore, TSS focused its toilet program from 2016-2018 March. TSS covered its toilet promotion program in 4 previous VDCs (Hiledevi, Dimipokhari, Pinkhuri & Deurali) and Manthali Municipality. During the working period, all these places have been declared as Open Defecation Free (ODF) zones. Finally, Ramechhap district was officially declared ad ODF district on 10th June, 2018. Since then, our toilet program is over. We will focus on drinking water program until the remaining period of the project. Due to the long-time work on toilet promotion program by TSS, it has greatly helped to achieve government master plan in declaring ODF district on time.

TSS has been able to help 4,015 families under the toilet promotion program. TSS has provided a nominal material support (toilet pan-pipe) as incentive to construct water-sealed toilet at their homes. TSS's support was about 10% and 90% contribution was made by the participating households themselves. With the construction & use of toilet nearby their homes, it has mainly helped to women, children, old-aged people, pregnant & disabled people. It has greatly helped to control on traditional open defecation practices.

This 4 years project has been officially completed on 31st March 2020. By the end of March 2020, it has achieved and exceeded the target family coverage from DW system. During the 4 years of period, a total of 11 new drinking water systems were constructed with the participation of water user families and benefitted to 587 families/households. The project has been further extended upto November 2021 due to savings from the exchange gain.

Further to understanding with WN Canada, the project has been extended for 5 months (Aug 2020-Jan 2021) with the utilization of remaining budget as of March 2020. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic and long lockdown imposed by the Government of Nepal, it was not able to start the extended period right after March 2020. During the extension period of six month, one more new drinking water system has been constructed for 64 families (population 324).

3.  Conflict Resolution & Peace Building Promotion Program (May 2018-Mar 2021)

Peace and stability in Nepal remain fragile and it is further aggravated in Ramechhap after the devastating earthquake. The community mediation helps to settle local dispute and maintain peace in the community. With funding from The Asia Foundation, TSS implemented a project entitled "Conflict Resolution and Peace Building Promotion Program", which is Community Mediation Program. This program was initially implemented for one year since September 2015. Due to the effectiveness of the program, it has been further extended upto the end of April 2020.

Since March 2017, The Government of Nepal has transformed previous small size of local bodies (VDCs & Municipality) into larger size local units such as Metropolitan, Sub-Metropolitan, Municipality & Rural Municipality nation wide. As per the local level restructure, there are a total 2 municipalities and 6 rural municipalities in Ramechhap district, that had previously 2 municipalities and 45 VDCs.

The community mediation program has been very effective in resolving community dispute among disputants parties and creating long-lasting relationship between them as well as promoting harmonious & peaceful environment in the society. TSS, with new funding from The Asia Foundation, has further implemented this program from May 1, 2018 upto April 30, 2019 to be worked under the new local level structure.

The main strategy of the Community Mediation Program is to develop community mediators at wards units, by which the mediation process is facilitated among disputant parties. The community mediators are trained with 8-days basic and 4-days advanced mediation training. About 600 trained community mediators are facilitating to resolve community disputes in all 64 wards and 8 municipalities. Altogether, they have facilitated to resolve over 1,000 cases among disputants parties in their communities.

Under the project, a dialogue forum has been established in each Ramechhap and Sindhuli district. The purpose of dialogue program is to facilitate the dialogue and resolve the multi-stakeholders issues among concerned people, group, government and civil societies.

The Covid-19 has also affected in smooth implementation of the project activities. In view of prevention and control of Covid-19, Nepal government has imposed nationwide lockdown since 24th March 2020 which was continued until 14th June 2020. With the upsent money as of April 2020 and additional budget from TAF, this project has been further extended upto March 2021.

4.  Nutrition Response, Recovery & Post-Recovery Program (May-Sep 2015, Feb 2016-Mar 2017 & Apr-Dec 2017) :

As the consequence of the devastating earthquake and highly affected in Ramechhap district, there is high chance of children getting unattended, uncared without food and neglected. With this, the possibility of more children becoming malnourished.

Therefore, UNICEF-Nepal initiated emergency nutrition response program in Ramechhap from May-Sep 2015. The purpose of the nutrition response program was to address major causes of nutritional deterioration and death of children and protecting nutritional status of pregnant mother. This program has covered in the entire district, A total of 15 Out-Patient Therapeutic (OTP) centers were established to provide nutritional support to child and women during earthquake emergency phase.

Despite the short period of time, the nutrition response program has improved the nutrition status of children under the age 6-59 months, pregnant women & lactating women. The nutrition response phase was ended on September 2015 and nutrition recovery phase was initiated to address the nutrition issues of children and pregnant and lactating women from Feb 2016 to March 2017. As the final stage, TSS has been now implementing post-disaster (earthquake) nutrition recovery program from April 2017 to the of December 2017. The nutrition program was formally handed over to the District Health Office, Ramechhap since Jan 2018.

TSS implemented all phases of the nutrition program as the partner organization of UNICEF with the lead role by District Health Office, Ramechhap.

The objective of the nutrition recovery action was to protect lives and livelihood of Children, Pregnant and Lactating Women (PLW)  through timely and effective humanitarian response/recovery to nutritional needs to minimize mortality and morbidity of the population and improve malnutrition among children under five, lactating and pregnant women.