Bhawana Luthra is the Executive Director at LEAD India since 2016. Previous to this role, she was the Director – Programs & Operations. She carries a sound understanding of the community based demand, responsive and participatory approaches to project planning and management, particularly in the water, sanitation, health & hygiene and livelihoods sector. She has first hand on-the-ground experience of facilitating community processes, identifying best practices, and culling out and documenting key learning from innovative community driven projects in Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.
Ms Luthra carried out a World Bank assisted study on the issues and options related to the Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) in the Rural Water Supply and Sanitation (RWSS) sector in the country. She worked on a formative research on ‘Triggers of Behaviour change in rural communities’ followed by designing a Sanitation IEC manual for ‘change-agents’ in Himachal Pradesh’. The assignment involved applied research based on extensive stakeholders consultation including secondary literature survey and field investigations.
As a RWSS specialist, she has been involved in contributing to the design and conduct of training programmes for the capacity building of grassroots functionaries engaged in the implementation of Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) in the district of Bilaspur in Chhattisgarh using Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) approach within the framework of an assignment funded by UNICEF. She was also engaged as one of the team members in designing and operationalising a Knowledge Management (KM) strategy for RWSS sector in the state of Maharashtra, which also includes identification and documentation of best practices as one of the key KM tools. The assignment is commissioned under The World Bank assisted Jalswarajya Project in Maharashtra.
Currently, she is heading the LEAD India Secretariat.