Fraser Sugden provides an update on site selection at Madhubani and Saptari and development of survey questionnaires.

Site selection:

Some initial site selection questionnaire data has been collected for three villages in Madhubani by the Sakhi team and Anoj Kumar, while a scoping visit to 7 villages of Saptari took place this week by Fraser Sugden, and Narayan Prasad Sah, who will be the full time representative for the local partner NGO working under iDE – Krishak Samuha Sangh. The field team was struck by the diversity of exciting opportunities to pilot a different combination of interventions in each of the proposed villages and the enthusiasm of the community members, and it will be a challenging task to shortlist the final two communities in each district.

Survey development:

A survey development day was held on the 20th November at National University of Singapore, Institute of Water Policy. Prof Wu Xun, Namrata Chindarkar, Joost Buurman, Yyvonne Jie Chen, Stuti Rawat and Fraser Sugden were present. The primary aim of the meeting was to finalize the household questionnaire used for activity 2.1, identifying the socio-economic context in the communities. The meeting prove to be a valuable opportunity for members of the socio-economic team to utilize their diverse expertise and develop a focused questionnaire. The final draft has now been completed, and will be circulated to the larger research team for comments shortly.