A five-day international training programme on the use of bamboo in building household and public toilets will be a key feature of Kerala Bamboo Fest 2014. It will be the 11th edition of the festival and will begin at Marine Drive in Kochi on December 5.
The training programme will start on December 1 and has ‘Bamboo Toilets for Private and Community’ as its theme.
The workshop comes in the background of the nationwide effort for sanitation in the country. Achieving access to toilets in the rural areas of India still remains a major challenge and the aim of the workshop is to develop toilet prototypes, which will also be exhibited at the Bamboo Fest, said a brochure on the workshop from Kerala Bamboo Mission.
The workshop will be held at Kerala Institute of Entrepreneurship Development, Kalamassery, with technical assistance from the Bamboo Centre of Auroville, Puducherry; South Asian Bamboo Foundation (SABF), Guwahati; and the National Institute of Design, Bengaluru, said an official from Kerala State Bamboo Mission.
Bamboo has been known for its diversified uses, especially in house-building, from time immemorial. The advent of technology has helped its use in place of wood and the five-day training programme is aimed at popularising the idea of mass-scale use of bamboo as a building material.
The Auroville Bamboo Centre and SABF have pioneered deployment of bamboo in building over the last few years by constructing bamboo-based structures at several locations, said the brochure.
The workshop is expected to generate interest in the introduction of bamboo as a building material for low-cost and affordable sanitation facilities; generation of awareness about the use of bamboo for sustainable development; create human resources in the field of bamboo-based construction; and to promote bamboo entrepreneurs and skill developers.
One of the other features of the fete will be a one-day summit of mostly policy-makers on ‘Enabling Bamboo Policy in India: From Idea to Action.’ The summit is being organised by the Centre for Civil Society and SABF with help from the Friedrich Naumann Foundation and Kerala State Bamboo Mission.
