Mr S.Damodaran founded Gramalaya in 1987 and works towards a larger goal: integrated development of women and children in rural areas through economic and health empowerment. Soon, he discovered that among other problems, open defecation resulted in the pollution of surface water bodies and drinking water sources. Mr S. Damodaran changed the track. Rural intervention was planned to cover safe drinking water supply through hand pumps, piped water supply through individual tap connection and sanitary household toilets in the villages coupled with hygiene education. By switching to the comprehensive approach, Gramalaya has formed SHE (Sanitation and Hygiene Education) Teams and AWASH (Association for Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) Committees so that the community ownership could be enlisted for sustainable sanitation practices and development.
When his NGO helped make Thandavampatti, a habitation of 62 homes in Tamil Nadu’s Tiruchirappalli district, into India’s first open-defecation free (ODF) village in 2003, Gramalaya’s Founder Mr S. Damodaran, 57, could not have imagined that the initiative would one day transform into a massive drive. Now, he runs a successful campaign for total sanitation in villages and slums across South India (excluding Kerala), and has already helped 226 villages and 186 slums achieve the ODF tag so far. In the Tiruchirappalli City Corporation, in the year 2002 Kalmandhai slum was announced by the City Corporation Commissioner as India’s first 100% ODF slum with his support in constructing a community toilet and child friendly toilets in the slums through Gramalaya NGO. Both the above achievements were recorded in the WSP South Asia (World Bank) publications.
