SDG 6.5.7 — Promoting Conscious Water Usage in the Wider Community

Last Updated: December 30, 2024

Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham actively promotes conscious and responsible water usage in the wider community through sustained outreach, scientific awareness, hands-on training, digital empowerment, and environmental restoration initiatives conducted throughout 2024. The university partners closely with rural communities, schools, SHGs, youth groups, and Panchayats to cultivate long-term water stewardship.

Community Awareness & Educational Outreach

During 2024, Amrita conducted extensive community-level awareness programmes across Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Himachal Pradesh. These sessions educated households, women’s groups, and youth on water conservation, safe water handling, rainwater harvesting, greywater reuse, and behavioural practices to reduce wastage.

School-based outreach included activity-based sessions, water clubs, student demonstrations on water testing, and youth-led awareness campaigns. These initiatives foster early awareness of water responsibility among children and adolescents.

Digital Empowerment through Mera Gaon Hamara Jal

Amrita’s flagship programme, Mera Gaon Hamara Jal, My Village Our Water, continued to empower communities in 2024 by enabling residents to map household water usage, sources, and quality via the Empower Community App. Data collected is processed by SREE, an AI-powered and geo-enabled decision-support system that identifies water-stress hotspots and suggests community-level interventions.

The app strengthened community participation in conscious water usage by helping residents understand daily consumption patterns, monitor local challenges, and adopt improved water-management practices.

Training, Capacity Building & Behavioural Change (2024)

Amrita delivered hands-on training programmes through a month long initiative on Water Sustainability called Wave of Change covering:

Household water measurement
Safe water storage and contamination prevention
Community-based rainwater harvesting
Greywater reuse for gardening and livelihoods
Low-cost wastewater recycling systems
Seasonal water preparedness strategies
Water quality testing for SHGs, Panchayat leaders, and youth groups

These trainings equipped communities especially women with practical skills to apply conscious water usage in their homes and neighbourhoods.

Cleanliness Drives & Ecosystem Restoration

In September 2024, Amrita led a major beach cleanup at Vellanathuruthu Beach in Alappad in collaboration with the UNESCO Chair at the Amrita School for Sustainable Futures, AYUDH Amritapuri, and local Panchayat leaders.

This initiative formed part of the Ministry of Earth Sciences’ Swachh Sagar, Surakshit Sagar national campaign. Over 100 volunteers participated, including Amrita Yuva Dharmadhara members and university faculty. Led by Alappad Panchayat President U. Ullas and Panchayat members, volunteers removed 13 sacks of plastic and non-biodegradable waste within two hours. The collected waste was handed over to the Panchayat for responsible disposal.

Live-in-Labs® & Grassroots Water Initiatives

Amrita’s Live-in-Labs® projects immersed students and researchers in rural communities to design practical, locally relevant water solutions. Efforts included:

Household water-use assessments
Demonstrations on greywater reuse
Installation of cost-effective purification systems
Training on rainwater harvesting and water-efficient agricultural practices

The programme complemented regional outreach efforts by reinforcing conscious water usage through direct community engagement.

Advocacy and Policy Engagement through SustIN

Amrita advanced community-focused water stewardship in 2024 through SustIN in collaboration with SustIN Live-in-Labs® members. Activities included: Distinguished lecture series featuring international water experts and Scientific discussions on emerging water technologies and climate impacts

Impact on the Wider Community

Amrita’s 2024 initiatives collectively contributed to:

Strengthened public awareness of sustainable water practices
Increased capacity of SHGs, schools, and Panchayats to manage water responsibly
Improved community understanding of water quality, measurement, and reuse
Restoration and protection of key local water bodies

Last Updated: December 30, 2024

Overview

Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham has always strived for addressing different water challenges prevalent in the wider community. Accordingly the university promotes conscious, responsible, and sustainable water usage in the wider community through continuous outreach, scientific awareness campaigns, training programmes, student engagement, and community partnerships.

The university works across villages with active participation of multi-stakeholders in these villages including schools, youth groups, and local governments to build a culture of water stewardship aligned with SDG 6 targets—especially SDG 6.5.7, which emphasizes public awareness and community engagement in responsible water use.

Evidence of Engagement

A. Mera Gaon Hamara Jal is a flagship program that has been working to empower communities to come together to map and monitor water resources, quality, and practices prevalent in the different communities across India, by bringing in a transformation in the community members to view water as a collective resource and join hands to utilise it more sustainably. This is achieved through a digital platform that uses data-driven insights to empower both communities and decision-makers. This initiative, launched in 2022, utilises Amrita’s Empower Community app to map the water resources in these communities through various aspects like sources, distribution, family-wise consumption patterns and demographic details. The data is fed to SREE, an AI-powered and Geo-enabled platform used for mapping hotspots at the village level for water sustainability and quality. The system then suggests interventions to the community on more effective utilisation of water resources. This initiative has been conducted at more than 1200 communities across India and this demonstrates the power of citizen-driven digital solutions that can empower communities to achieve water equity.

Mera Gaon Hamara Jal Dashboard

Community Awareness Campaigns

Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, has established water management committees in different communities across India. Regular awareness programmes are held to educate households, women self help groups, and youth on addressing water challenges prevalent in those communities. These capacity-building sessions include training on

Measuring household water use (through Mera Gaon Hamara Jal)
Practical water conservation techniques including community-based rainwater harvesting
Safe water storage and handling
Reducing wastage through behavioural changes and reusing
Greywater re-use methods (kitchen, bathing water)
Low-cost wastewater recycling units
Simple household filtration and reuse systems
Reusing water for gardening and livelihood activities

Special programmes are conducted in the schools in these communities to cultivate water-conscious values among young people: