Pavitra Ganga concludes its series of co-creation workshops

Despite the extremely difficult situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Pavitra Ganga was able to complete its series of co-creation workshops as part of the water governance work of the project. Most of the workshops that aimed to identify critical issues and strategies for wastewater treatment and management at the demonstration site areas in Kanpur and New Delhi were turned into online events.

While the first workshops could still be organized physically,  the process had to be paused and plans revised as soon as the first wave of the pandemic hit India in 2020.

The only feasible alternative to continue the process was to opt for shorter online workshops with a duration of between 1.5 and 3 hours. This finally resulted in 4 workshops for Kanpur and 3 for New Delhi.

During the workshops, all relevant aspects about water governance were discussed: the current situation and issues, the future objectives and aspirations, the solutions and necessary developments, the potential role of the Pavitra Ganga technologies and the desired outcomes.

Extra bilateral meetings

In addition to the online workshops in New Delhi and Kanpur, 23 bilateral meetings were conducted in Kanpur and 12 bilateral meetings were done with stakeholders in New Delhi. These meetings were done prior to and in-between co-creation workshops with the goal of incorporating reflections from the subjective point of view of the stakeholders involved. Also, these continuous bilateral engagements aided in making participants feel at ease and ask any questions or share any comments they would be reluctant to share in a group setting.

The results, lessons learnt and implications for scaling are now being processed and will be presented in one of Pavitra Ganga deliverables (D2.3) and will also be presented to the stakeholders and other relevant parties in a final face to face event in 2023.