FINISH Society

FINISH Society (Financial Inclusion Improves Sanitation and Health) is a Lucknow-based not-for-profit registered in 2010. It works on water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) across rural and urban India, with a focus on making these services sustainable and accessible to underserved communities. Over 15 years it has expanded into solid waste management, renewable energy, skill development, and research, while keeping WASH at its core.

Headquarters: Chinhat, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh Founded: 2010 Registration: Societies Registration Act 1860 Operating states: Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab, and others

What FINISH Society does

• WASH: Community-level work to improve access to safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, and hygiene behaviour. This includes toilet construction, ODF (Open Defecation Free) sustainability, faecal sludge management, and menstrual hygiene management. Field teams work with households, local bodies, and gram panchayats.
• WASH in Schools: Building and maintaining functional toilets and handwashing facilities in government schools, training teachers and students on hygiene practices, and publishing operational guidebooks for school WASH maintenance.
• Solid and Liquid Waste Management: Working with urban local bodies in cities like Udaipur, Guntur, Chirala, and Dungarpur to set up source segregation, waste collection systems, and composting. Partners include ITC Mission Sunehra Kal and NSE Foundation.
• Skill and Livelihood Development: Training sanitation workers, waste pickers, and community members in skills that improve their income and working conditions. Programs have covered Safai Mitras (sanitation workers), women in informal settlements, and youth in rural areas.
• Renewable Energy: Installing solar panels, solar lights, and LED lighting in villages, schools, hospitals, and forest communities. The program has deployed 4,500+ solar lights and 30,000+ LEDs.
• Training and Capacity Building: Building the skills of government officials, NGO staff, and frontline workers on WASH, waste management, and hygiene through workshops and field training.
• Research and Knowledge Management: Producing research on sanitation outcomes, social return on investment, menstrual hygiene in urban India, toilet sustainability, and grievance redressal systems. Published studies are available freely on the website. FINISH has also piloted a Sanitation Impact Bond in India and documented its evaluation.

FINISH Society is one of the few Indian NGOs working across the full WASH value chain: from community behaviour change to waste management systems to policy research. Roles here span field coordination, community mobilisation, research and documentation, training, engineering and infrastructure, and partnerships. People with backgrounds in public health, environmental engineering, social work, or development studies will find the work relevant.

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