People's initiative for total sanitation

VERC was established in 1977 as a project of Save the Children-USA. In 1981, it was indigenized as a private voluntary development organization. Its vision is "A self­reliant society based on justice, equity and sustainability where every human being has the equal opportunity to maximize theirpotentialities ". VERC has had a WATSAN program since inception and WaterAid has been funding this since 1986. Despite a lot of effort made by different stakeholders in the country, the rural WATSAN context of Bangladesh still estimates safe drinking water coverage as 97.5% while actual coverage comes down to 74% because of arsenic contamination in the ground water source. Sanitation coverage for rural areas is only 41.3 %, which in some cases goes down to 15%. Considering the situation, VERC thought of looking for a more effective approach to address the situation. Accordingly, the NGO has innovated the approach of 100% sanitation in the country during the implementation of it's Phase III project activities which started in 1999. Under the new approach, VERC has enabled 50 communities to achieve 100% sanitation cov­erage in seven sub-districts with increased access to safe water supply.