On the occasion of the World Water Day which is celebrated every year on 22 March, WASMO has planned ‘Jal Yatras’ during16-19th March 2008 for creating awareness for water conservation and community participation. Four routes are planned for the Jal Yatras, one starting at Dwarka in Jamnagar, the second at Koteshwar in Kutch, the third at Bhavnath in Junagadh and the fourth starting at Vankia in Amreli. All the four routes will converge on 19th March 2008 at Ambaji, a prominent religious place in the tribal district of Banaskantha adjoining Rajasthan border.

The Jal Yatra will aim at raising the overall awareness on decentralised community-managed water supply and sanitation schemes and also focus on demand generation for community participation. It is hoped that more and more rural communities will be motivated to form new Pani Samitis and take leadership for management of the drinking water supply and sanitation systems of their villages and facilitate further scaling up of decentralisation in the sector. These four routes will cover 12 districts (out of 26) and in all the Yatra will pass through about 42 villages. The participants will make stops at villages on the route and at each stop activities such as workshops, campaigns, talks by eminent persons from the field of development and water and sanitation will be organised.

On each of these routes every day three villages will be covered. Each village selected on this route would be a model village for management of their own drinking water supply systems and the people from at least two talukas will be called for participation and interaction with the Jal Yatris. Around 100 Jal Yatris, 25 on each route, will be representing selected 20 villages, who have done extra ordinary work in this sector. They will present the processes and achievements of their villages through visuals and interactions. This Jal Yatra will be able to cover around 42 centres on way and at each centre around 400 persons from nearby 100 villages would participate.

All the four Yatras will culminate into a big gathering at Ambaji on 19th March where all the experiences, learnings and insights gained en route will be shared with participants from all the four routes. The Hon’ble Chief Minister of Gujarat, will address the gathering at Ambaji on 19th March in the afternoon through video-conferencing and the event will thus turn into a interactive and vibrant workshop.

In May 2007, the GoG appointed five Gram Mitras namely, Gram Mitra-Krishi, Gram Mitra-Shikshan, Gram Mitra-Arogya, Gram Mitra-Vikas and Gram Mitra-Jan Kalyan in each village of the state. These Gram Mitras provide honorary services in the villages, apart from carrying out their own regular occupations, for the benefit of economic and social development of the villages. The advantage of involving the Gram Mitras is that they are relatively young (most of them below 22 years) and can be molded according to the requirements of the programme. They also have lesser social obligations due to which they are able to devote time for village development activities.