Vandana Mehra

The World Bank uses knowledge as a key tool to progress the reform agenda in the water and sanitation sector. As part of this knowledge management function, governance and institutional reform imperatives, Vandana Mehra works with governments/water utilities in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan as well as Tajikistan to help them devise a roadmap for strategic communications and consultations with stakeholders. This includes assistance in building the government’s capacity at federal, state and local level to share and disseminate information; to communicate with its stakeholders; to provide training in communications as required; contribute to capacity-building efforts in water and sanitation for many stakeholders including regional media and politicians. In the last few years, she has also worked intensively on communications in projects around natural disasters which include the earthquake in Pakistan (Oct 2005); cyclone Nargis (Mynmaar, May 2008); flooding in Pakistan (2010) and Queensland, Australia (2011) besides leading the communications component in a large number of projects in urban water in India, Pakistan, and urban and rural sanitation in India and Tajikistan. The communications activities range include advocacy, reform communications as well as behavior change communications. In 2013 she was a key team member in managing an internal World Bank study titled “Landscape Study of Behavior Change Interventions in Sustainable Development Projects.” The past few years have been devoted to helping selected Indian states move from a top-down “IEC” approach to understanding the nuances and tricks of behavior change communications for Swacch Bharat ( Clean India program).  

Vandana also manages production of a host of knowledge products including publications, movies and WSPs trademark cartoon calendar in close coordination with colleagues across the world in activities that contribute to advocate for inclusion of strategic communications in all projects.