Nigeria: Katsina Campaigns Against Open Defecation

8 September 2009

Katsina — Katsina State Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Agency (RUWASSA) has this week launched a triggering of “disgust and shame” campaign to fifty five communities to fight an indiscriminate and open defecation habits and scale up sanitation and hygiene delivery in the rural areas.

Executive Director of the agency, Abubakar Gege, who flagged off the program in selected communities in Bakori local government area of the state, said the campaign which covers nine selected local governments is aimed at sensitizing communities about the associated dangers of open defecation and the importance of household cleaning among others. Represented by the agency’s desk officer in collaboration with United Nations Children Education Fund (UNICEF), Aminu Dayyabu Safana said the campaign being conducted with other non governmental organisations (NGOs) is geared towards the certification of those communities as open defecation free (ODF) by 2010, under the national year of sanitation action plan. Aminu Dayyabu said the triggering concept allow communities to take charge of their environment under the community led total sanitation(CLTS) to ensure total elimination of OD practices, full coverage of latrine usage, increased hygiene and sanitation activities and reduction of sanitation related diseases amongst communities.

He commended the state government for the creation of facilitating wash departments in the local governments and ensuring adequate funding of the project while urging the communities to ensure household cleaning and hand washing at critical periods after defecation and before eating.

Source – http://allafrica.com/stories/200909090253.html

Nepal: Squatter woman sold ornament to construct toilet

A squatter woman of Lamjung has constructed a toilet by selling her ornament. Jitmaya Magar of Bhoteodar VDC-8 invested her hard-earned money and sold her gold earrings and a goat to construct a concrete toilet at an investment of Rs. 10,000 [US$ 130]. She constructed the toilet [...] after Bhoteodar VDC was declared an open defecation free zone on the occasion of 10th National Sanitation Action Week, [after] the construction of toilets in 1,378 houses [...] public toilets in Krishna garden and [toilets in] six schools.

The Tenth National Sanitation Action Week (NSAW) was held from 05-11 June 2009 with the slogan of ‘we are proud of having toilets in our homes’. Sanitation Week is being celebrated in Nepal since 1977.

Experts are pushing to get the right to sanitation included in the new constitution.

The government has set a national goal to provide sanitation to all by 2017 – which would require constructing 24,000 toilets every month – but there is a shortfall of at least Rs. 24 billion [US$ 311 million] to achieve this. Currently, about 45 per cent of the population has access to toilet facility and some 14.2 million Nepali people [out of total population of 29.5 million] defecate in the open.

Source: Nepal Samacharpatra / NGO Forum, 12 Jun 2009 ; Himalayan Times , 05 Jun 2009 ; Deepak Dahal, Nagarik / NGO Forum, 05 Jun 2009

Nepal: No toilet, no job

Staff of some organizations in Dolpa [Karnali Zone, western Nepal] will [lose] their job if they do not construct [a] toilet in their house by the end of this fiscal year in mid-July 2009. [S]taff working in Deprox Nepal decided to request the management not to extend the term of the staff who do not construct toilet within mid-July.

Similarly, Decade Dolpa has also decided not to extend the term of the staff if they do not construct toilets [by] mid-July. Staff working in these organizations have also agreed to the condition. Chief District Officer Dil Bahadur Ghimire has requested all the staff to construct toilets [after] the District Drinking Water Office requested all offices, schools and organizations to construct toilets to make the district an open defecation free zone.

[...] Less than 12 percent of the population in Dolpa use a toilet.

Source: Kantipur / NGO Forum, 29 April 2009

The Story of Younus – sanitation promotion animation from Pakistan

This animated short film [5 min, 22 sec] details the travails of a barefoot consultant who promotes sanitation in villages in Pakistan. The barefoot consultant prospers in his work and develops a working sanitation market, he achieves such success that he is soon asked to travel to other villages to help them become Open Defecation Free.

The film was directed by Numair Abbas of Gogimation, a division of Gogi Studios in Islamadad, Pakistan. It was produced for the Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) and posted on WSP’s YouTube Channel.

Bangladesh: Community-Led Total Sanitation – breaking a dirty old habit in Bangladesh

Dinajpur district residents have stopped defecating in the open because of the children’s total sanitation campaign that follows a radical community-led approach.

A procession of children march through a village in Dinajpur demanding an end to open defecation. Photo: Pal Bangladesh

Whistle blowing is a favorite pastime among children in the villages of Dinajpur district in northern Bangladesh. They would blow their whistles when they spot fellow villagers, often adults, defecating in the open, chasing the surprised offenders who would then pull their pants up and attempt to escape the noise and humiliation. [...] Within 6 months, they shamed some 250 people from different villages. Besides the whistling and flag-marking, the children also march around villages, chanting slogans against open defecation (OD), sending a direct message to all villagers about the dirty old habit.

The children’s involvement in this direct action against OD is part of the Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS), “an integrated approach to achieving and sustaining open defecation free status.” The children know that their efforts help protect their own and their communities’ health, and adults include them in community decision-making.

[...] Designed by social development specialist Dr. Kamal Kar, CLTS was introduced by Plan, an international development agency, to some 200 villages in Dinajpur in 2004.

[...] In CLTS, hands-off facilitation is important. The rule of thumb for social development facilitators is to trigger self-realization, and not to lecture. Instant provision of hardware-latrines or toilets-are also discouraged. Villagers have to realize first that the problem is staring at them right in the face. The CLTS approach helps communities recognize that they need such sanitation facilities, that they should mobilize themselves to build their own toilets, and that everyone in the village should contribute to achieve “total sanitation.”

[...] Today, most Dinajpur villages have achieved “open defecation free” (ODF) status and, thanks to Plan’s efforts, a number of villages in several districts have also adopted the CLTS approach.

The children’s campaign is the just the beginning. CLTS allows villagers to generate their own ideas for improvement, take control of development processes and decision-making, and manage and sustain the activities. Often, CLTS has led to improving latrine designs, adopting hygienic practices, managing solid waste and wastewater, protecting drinking water sources, and other environmental activities.

Some villagers, however, can prove to be more difficult than others. Ferdousi said, “Two years to convert everyone is not enough, but we will keep on raising awareness.”

Plan now promotes CLTS in other countries in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. A CLTS Handbook, published in 2008, is also available for social development facilitators.

Related web site: Community-led Total Sanitation – Bangladesh

See also: Whistle blowers put a stop to open defecation, Plan Bangladesh, 28 Mar 2008

Source: Cezar Tigno, ADB, Jan 2009

Sierra Leone: Communities take charge, one latrine at a time

Kadiatou Samura proudly showed her pristine new toilet to her Member of Parliament, the leader of her chiefdom and the head of the UN Children’s Fund’s [UNICEF] district office as they toured her village, Kamayintin, in Sierra Leone’s Bombali district. The village was celebrating its status as the chiefdom’s fifth to be declared “free of open defecation”.

The toilet was elegant and simple: an earth floor, walls built from local wood, topped by a conical straw roof. Samura built it herself with the help of 12 other families in the village, who together built 17 toilets in a month. “This toilet has saved us from sickness. Fewer of our children are falling ill from diarrhoea now,” Samura told IRIN.

[...] Just a third of rural Sierra Leoneans have access to clean water and to sanitation facilities, according to UNICEF’s Victor Kinyanjui, water, sanitation, hygiene manager. Diarrhoea is the third leading cause of death in children under five in Sierra Leone.

[...] Reversing old aid models whereby outsiders pay for and construct expensive latrines that villagers cannot afford to maintain, in this approach villagers choose their own latrine models, find the materials locally, raise money if necessary and then build them, said Kinyanjui. Sanitation experts guide villagers on the types of toilet to suit their topography and budget. Samura’s latrine – assuming the free labour of her fellow villagers – cost her nothing, whereas a standard modern latrine can cost up to US$100, according to Kinyanjui – equivalent to a third of annual earnings for most Sierra Leoneans.

[...] UNICEF’s aims to roll it out across 10 districts of the country by 2010, with ActionAid, Plan International, Oxfam, and GOAL, implementing the project.

[...] Mohamed Sankoh, programme manager for ActionAid in Bombali district, told IRIN: “Before, communities realised they were – excuse my language – eating each other’s [faeces] and it made them feel ashamed. Now we have seen a great change in people here, in the way they think”

Not all are convinced by the new approach. District councillor Eric Ceesay prefers the “safe, clean, concrete toilets” that international agencies – including UNICEF – used to build. Some 560 of these have been built over the years, and the district needs a further 1,500, Ceesay said. The community-led facilities are “inconveniently located, they have poor ventilation, and…they attract snakes.”

[...] To reinforce [sustainability of safe hygiene practices], local chiefs should resurrect now moribund local by-laws giving health inspectors the right to assess households’ hygiene levels and to exact fines of up to 16 US cents when they are sub-standard, Serra Limba Chief Kandeh Luseine said.

See also:  CLTS – Sierra Leone

Source: IRIN, 24 Feb 2009

Nepal, Lalitpur: new sanitation initiative benefitting Lubhu people

Lalitpur: The people living in Lubhu [or Luboo], and its vicinity are now happy that they now [have improved sanitation and ended the practice of open defecation]. ”After two years of continuous efforts made by the [Lubhu Infrastructure and Environment Improvement Committee (LIEIC)], most of the villages in the areas have been free from this serious problem,” Ram Bahadur Shrestha, chairman of the of Committee, said.

[...] A total of 152 toilets, including both general and ecological sanitary [ecosan] toilets, have been constructed at private households as well as public places at the initiative of the committee and UN-HABITAT. Anil Sthapit, director of [NGO] Guthi, said that bricks have been laid down in 2,000 square metres of local roads and a drainage system

[Besides sanitation, a new piped water supply system was constructed and over 50 traditional wells and ponds revived]. Also the 800 students of local Mahalaxmi Secondary School have benefitted from a rainwater harvesting system, [with a capacity of 5,00 litres], installed in the area. The water is processed through a bio-sand filter processing system.

A total of 803 locals were trained to make villages free from pollution, maintain safe drainage facilities and create public health awareness campaign in the area. These people are now providing training to other people.

The project was a joint effort of the Department of Urban Development and Building Construction, Centre for Integrated Urban Development, WaterAid Nepal and UN-HABITAT.

See a short Nepalnews.com video (in Nepali) on the Lubhu project here.

Source:  NGO Forum, 05 Jan 2009 ; The Kathmandu Post / NGO Forum, 04 Jan 2008

Pakistan: stopping open defecation through behavioural change

“I remember the time when I’d get up to the chirping of the birds, walk across to a nearby field, relieve myself in the fresh, open air -undisturbed – go to the nearby canal, take a bath and then come home to a hearty breakfast… before going off to work in the fields,” said an old farmer.

“This is the mind-set against which we are working,” said Wasim Aslam, an activist striving to make 564 villages in Pakistan open defecation free (ODF).

Aslam is from Lodhran, one of the implementers of the Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) campaign initiated by the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Programme (WSP), and one 1,500 activists who have been trained to get the CLTS movement off the ground.

[...] The 1,500 trained activists are mostly men, but their success is in large measure due to the women behind them. Irfanullah, a local counsellor in Peshawar, said that had it not been for his wife, he would not have made any headway.

[...] “We want people to need a toilet. We don’t just give it to them as they may not necessarily use it. We work on their psychology,” said Aslam, adding that CLTS was first introduced in Pakistan in 2004.

[...] According to Javed Ali Khan, director-general of the Ministry of Environment, ODF initiatives have benefited about 1.12 million people. The practice of open defecation in rural areas came down from about 74 percent of the rural population in 1990, to 45 percent by 2006.

According to the Ministry of Environment, 73 percent of the population now has access to a latrine – 96 percent in urban areas, and 62 percent in rural areas.

CLTS is now included in the national sanitation policy, said [World Bank sanitation specialist] Alrai.

Source: IRIN, 12 Dec 2008

India: public hygiene initiative for villages has not worked, says NGO

Nirmal Gram Puraskar (NGP), which translates as clean village prize, was launched five years ago to promote sanitation in rural India with a [Rs 500,000] cash reward for villages [which achieve 100% sanitation coverage in terms of (a) 100% sanitation coverage of individual house holds, (b) 100% school sanitation coverage (c) free from open defecation and (d) clean environment maintenance].

The public hygiene initiative hasn’t quite worked the way it was meant to, according to a study by a not-for-profit organization, The Action Research Unit, or Taru, supported by Unicef.

[T]he study, with a sample size of 7,100 households and carried out between January and April 2008, showed that in 162 villages that had received the first and second lots of the prize in 2004-05 and 2005-06, the practice had resurfaced, said Ranjan Verma, director of Taru.

NGP is part of the government’s Total Sanitation Campaign.

[T]he monitoring system and social mobilization had been so heavily geared towards earning the Nirmal Gram status and the cash reward that comes with it that the gains were being frittered away, he said.

In October [2008], President Pratibha Patil gave away the NGP to a total of 4,278 gram panchayats, or village councils.

[...] Toilets clogging up because of a lack of maintenance back-up and an insufficient number of trained masons were cited by [Bindeshwar] Pathak, [founder of Sulabh International], and Verma as reasons impeding the scheme.

The Taru study was carried out to assess the impact of the programme in 162 villages spread across Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. Besides the 7,100 households, it covered 500 schools and child- and mother-care centres known as anganwadis. The study found about 15% of households did not have access to a toilet and [practised open defecation]. “This is because within a panchayat there are houses which are either on the fringes or belong to those who don’t get along with the village ‘establishment’,” said Verma.

And as many as 34% of the households that had constructed toilets did not use them regularly.

See also: Effectiveness of Indian incentives for rural sanitation questioned, Source Bulletin, Nov 2007

Source: Rajdeep Datta Roy, liveMint.com, 16 Nov 2008

Nepal: concrete toilet in temporary houses

Tanahun: Locals of Panibote village of Tanahun Vyas-5, who previously defecated in the open, have constructed concrete toilets in their temporary houses.

A local Jit Bahadur Bote told that the Woman Development [Committee], municipality and District Development Committee provided materials worth Rs. 2000 [US$ 27] per house to construct the toilets. The village was declared an open defecation free village [in 2007] after the construction of toilets in all the 27 households of the village. “We have arranged bricks, gravels and sand ourselves. It had cost Rs. 9,000 [US$ 120] to construct a toilet,” said a local Som Bahadur Bote.

Source: Kantipur / NGO Forum, 04 Oct 2008