Stepping Stone with support of UN Habitat and International Olympic Committee organized a felicitation programme on 9 January, 2010 in Lalitpur to honour 4 schools of the district for their praiseworthy contribution in water source conservation and environmental sanitation activities. Vice president of Nepal Olympic Committee Ganga Thapa felicitated the Saraswoti Higher Secondary School, Chhampi Devi Higher Secondary School, Bajra Barahi Higher Secondary School and Shree Padma Prakash Secondary School, each with a set of sound system at the programme. Those schools along with six others had conducted various WATSAN activities in different locations of the district in 2010 with support of Stepping Stone and Youth Opportunity Fund, UN Habitat. Their initiatives contributed conservation of local water sources and environmental sanitation in the area. Apart from these, these schools sensitized students on various WATSAN issues, who later conducted different awareness raising campaigns including street drama, essay competition, cleaning campaigns and other awareness activities that disseminated the message about safe drinking water and proper sanitation in the area effectively. At the programme, the sport materials were also distributed to 14 schools of the district with support of the International Olympic Committee. Handing over the sport materials, Mr. Thapa told that the distribution of those materials aims to impart extra curricular knowledge to the school students and help them in developing their personality. Chief Technical Advisor at South Asia Region, UN Habitat Water for Asian Cities Programme Dr. Roshan Raj Shrestha appreciated the role played by concerned government agencies and civil society organizations to achieve remarkable improvement in implementing human value based water, sanitation and hygiene education in the last few years in Nepal. He opined that such activities should be continued further to improve water and sanitation sector in the country. During the felicitation programme, the students drew and exhibited the pictures about the value of safe and adequate drinking water, sanitation and hygiene in human life. Regarding these pictures, Prafulla Man Singh Pradhan, UN Habitat informed that UN Habitat would select some among these pictures to send in an international art competition that would be organized by UN Habitat to commemorate World Habitat Day 2011. Curriculum Officer at Curriculum Development Center (CDC), Ram Prasad Subedi said that piloting of human value based water,sanitation and hygiene education programmes at school curriculums would help the CDC to improve its school level curriculum in days ahead. Rashmi Kafle, president of Stepping Stone said that similar projects have also been implemented at more than 40 schools of Morang, Sunsari, Bharatpur, Kathmandu and Bhaktapur as well. She also shared that the sport materials have also been provided to those schools. At the programme, the team of students from Padma Prakash S.School performed a drama bearing the information about importance of safe drinking water and sanitation.