The morning routine in Rina Devi’s village in Assam’s Morigaon district had stayed unchanged for generations. Women lined up by the wells, their steel buckets clinking in rhythm as they filled them before sunrise. Children ran to ponds to fill bottles, laughing as they splashed their feet in the water. To the eye, the water looked clear, and so, to most, it was considered clean. Watching this every day, Rina felt uneasy. Something wasn’t right.

“People would tell me, the water looks fine, so why should we stop using it?” Rina recalls. “They didn’t realize that clear water can still make you sick.” She had tried to explain the importance of safe water again and again, but her words rarely made a difference.

Then came a turning point. Rina joined an ECHO session conducted by the INREM Foundation, focused on water safety and behaviour change. She joined expecting another routine training but found something entirely different. “I thought it would be like any other training,” she says. “But it was different. Listening to others share their stories and real cases made me see what I was missing, how to really connect with people.”

The session showed her that awareness was not just about information, it was about connection. So she decided to change her approach. Rina organized a Jal Jagrukta Sabha (a water awareness meeting) in her village. This time, she did not lecture. She used stories, everyday examples, and simple pictures to show how water that looks clean can still carry disease. She even demonstrated with small activities how contamination spreads through touch and storage.

“When people saw it for themselves, they started asking questions. That’s when I knew they were listening,” she says. The shift was almost immediate. In the weeks that followed, over thirty households moved to safer water sources. The villagers, moved by Rina’s effort, decided to create their own water safety team to ensure that everyone stayed mindful of hygiene and proper storage.

Now, when Rina walks through the narrow lanes of her village, she often hears women reminding each other to cover their storage containers or clean their taps. “That makes me proud,” she says softly. “Change doesn’t happen overnight. It starts with one conversation.”

Rina’s story is simple, yet deeply powerful. It shows how grassroots workers, when equipped with the right knowledge and community learning platforms, can transform awareness into action.

What began as a single conversation around a village well has now grown into a shared movement for safe water and healthier lives.