Kochi: Seventy-one college students from 20 universities in Japan are among those who have made Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham’s Jivamritam Project, an initiative to bring clean drinking water to more than 5,000 villages across the country, a success. The students were in the Alappuzha district for 10 days to install 36 Jivamritam Water Filtration Systems, which will provide clean drinking water to 20,000 villagers in the area.
The Japanese students, along with 140 students from Amrita, worked on the project through Amrita’s Live-in-Labs programme,which provides experiential learning opportunities for students to understand ground-level challenges faced by rural communities and subsequently develop sol-utions to the challenges.
Over the 10-day period, the Japanese students fabricated water-filtration systems designed according to the local needs of people, and installed these in 36 locations, spanning 11 panchayats in the Alappuzha. These are Ambalapuzha North, Pun-napara South, Punnapara North, Purakkad, Aryad, Marrarikulam South, Ezhupunna Panchayath, Thuravoor Panchayath, Champakulam Panch-ayath, Nedumudi Pancha-yath and Mannanchery Panchayat.
The installed systems were then handed over to beneficiary committees and sustained for operation and maintenance through the participation of villagers under the leadership of local administrators. The 18 to 23-year-old Japanese students, from universities in Osaka and Tokyo regions received training for fabricating and assembling these water-filtration systems.
“The Jivamritam system uses a dual filter made of sand and activated carbon followed by filters of five-micron and one-micron filtration. Each system also includes an ultraviolet water-purifier as well as two storage tanks to keep treated and untreated water separate. The filtered-water tanks are integrated with taps to provide drinking water,” said Dr. Maneesha Sudheer, head of the project .
