YRA believes that Social awareness gives the ability to understand and respond to the needs of others more effectively and gain respect with the community and self. The core activity of WASH emphasizes the teaching of basic sanitation and hygiene to communities and school children with a particular focus on girls' education and gender equality as a necessary complement to the success of water and sanitation infrastructure projects.

YRA contributes to sustainable change in WASH delivery systems. Our primary focus enables everyone to access affordable and reliable WASH services – **leaving no one behind**.

Our programs in households, schools, and health facilities are designed to build professional, organizational, and inter-institutional capacities to deliver environmentally and financially sustainable rural WASH services.

Elements:

• Water: YRA’s focus on access to safe & clean water is at the forefront of exploring innovative ways to access water and building climate-resistant infrastructure.
• Sanitation: YRA works to ensure access and use of basic toilets and ways to separate human waste from contact with people. Our core area of work for sanitation is to end the practice of “open defecation” and facilitate community-led initiatives to build, maintain and use basic toilets.
• Hygiene: YRA’s work in hygiene aims to nurture good hygiene practices to prevent disease and improve the health of children& communities.

It is built on three core strategic objectives:

1. Increasing demand for improved WASH facilities and practices
2. Improving the quality of service provision
3. Improving governance of the sector.

Gender and social inclusion will be an area of specific attention in the three strategic objectives, as well as climate vulnerability and resilience.

Critical aspects of our work:

• Trigger mass demand – unlocking demand for sanitation through community-led processes;
• Support local governments and other institutions to stimulate a collective commitment from people to stop open defecation and develop plans for total sanitation (gram sabha resolutions plans);
• Conduct a study on the normativity of individual households;
• Identify the Houses that need repair or up gradation of HHs units by Strengthening the availability of supporting resource skills (masons), materials (slabs, rings, and cement blocks), and services (pit emptying, repairs and maintenance);
• Promote technical options ( pit toilets, toilets with bathing spaces) and ensure that these options include designs suitable for families with different needs and constraints like less water;
• Leadership development to promote champions who steer the movement from within;
• Develop and capacitate village institutions (local government, water and sanitation committees, and frontline workers) to lead, own and manage the processes and change;