Safely Managed Sanitation Services in the Global Sanitation Fund (GSF)

Sustainable Development Goal 6 for water and sanitation calls for the realization of safely managed services (SMSS) for everyone by 2030. While there has been significant research and implementation to improve the sanitation service chain in urban settings, little guidance is available on how to achieve and sustain SMSS in rural contexts.

In 2019, WSSCC commissioned this study conducted by Andy Robinson and Andy Peal to examine to what extent Global Sanitation Fund (GSF)-supported programmes enabled SMSS in rural areas with collective behaviour change approaches like CLTS.

This study includes:
– A summary of SMSS concepts and issues in rural areas
– SMSS findings from GSF-supported programmes in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia
– Good practices for monitoring SMSS in rural areas
– Recommendations for rural programming

Authors: WSSCC; Publication date: October 2020; Publisher: WSSCC; No. of pages: 155

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Sanitation Learning Hub launched

Following the start of a new four-year programme funded by Sida, the Institute of  Development Studies (IDS) launched the Sanitation Learning Hub website on 22 June 2020.

The website is divided into into three main sections:

Practical Support 

This section presents recommended approaches and practical tools to help sanitation and hygiene practitioners do their job well. It reflects our commitment to adaptable, ‘combinable’ and context-specific learning and sanitation approaches. Each approach page has an introduction recommended resources.

Current Thinking

Resources are divided by nine essential themes in this section. Each theme has an introduction, recommended resources, and sub-themes that get into more detail.

• Behaviour change
• Climate change
• Challenging contexts
• Gender
• Health
• Hygiene
• Leave No One Behind
• Monitoring, evaluation and learning
• Sustainability and safely-managed sanitation

Connect, Share, Learn

The desire to bring together sanitation and hygiene professionals is reflected here. You can find blogs, news, events in the sector and more information about workshops, including stories from participants of past workshops. You can also submit a blog in this section.

Watch this video introduction to the new website.

Sprinting the last mile in Nepal

In September 2019, the Government of Nepal declared the country ‘open defecation free’ (ODF). Leading up to this milestone, the Government of Nepal and other sector partners focused on  the challenging Terai plains – the ‘last mile’ of Nepal’s Sanitation Campaign.

Sprinting the Last Mile: Nepal’s Sanitation Campaign in the Terai documents the key success factors from the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council’s Global Sanitation Fund programme in Nepal, executed by UN-HABITAT, concentrating on the Terai region. By building local campaign coordination bodies, leveraging local finance, and igniting broad-based movements for improving sanitation and hygiene, sanitation coverage in the Terai accelerated from around 13% to near universal coverage in just over four years, according to data from the Government of Nepal. These insights and lessons are relevant for other behaviour change-based sanitation and hygiene campaigns across Asia and beyond.

Also available in French!

New WSSCC resource! EQND Handbook for CLTS Facilitators

The Equality and Non-discrimination (EQND) and Community-led Total Sanitation (CLTS) Handbook provides practical guidance for ensuring that behaviour change interventions leave no one behind.

Drawing on experience from across the sector, this handbook is specifically targeted towards those implementing or supervising CLTS interventions at the community level. Key features include:

• A summary of EQND principles
• Step-by-step guidance on applying these principles during pre-triggering, triggering meetings, and post-triggering follow-up visits
• Annexes with practical tools, templates, and resources.

Two other documents of excellent reference include the Human Rights Principles and Terminology – Equality and Non-Discrimination: Supporting the Human Rights to Water and Sanitation (WSSCC, SNV and UTS) and Guidance and Tips for learning from people who may be most disadvantaged during the programme process (WSSCC) both collated by Sarah House.

As well, check out new resources published by the CLTS Knowledge Hub:

• Nine ideas for Gender Transformative WASH programming.
• Frontiers 10: Equality and non-discrimination (EQND) in sanitation programmes at scale (Part 1 of 2)
• Frontiers 13: Support mechanisms to strengthen equality and non-discrimination (EQND) in rural sanitation (Part 2 of 2).   

WaterAid – Mass behaviour change campaigns What works and what doesn’t

Mass behaviour change campaigns: What works and what doesn’t. WaterAid, October 2017.

Hygiene promotion campaigns are often piecemeal, insufficiently planned and executed, and a re-tread of unproven or, worse, ineffective approaches. The
lamentable performance of handwashing campaigns in changing behaviours reveals
a lack of coherent thinking in policies, strategies and guidelines.

To promote an effective approach to mass behaviour change campaigning, and
hygiene promotion in particular, WaterAid commissioned an in-depth global and
historical analysis of behaviour change campaigns, analysing both successes and
failures.

This paper highlights the main points from that study combined with findings from a previous WaterAid paper on how some countries in East Asia successfully
achieved the widespread adoption of hygienic practices.

It provides policy recommendations as a set of ‘working assumptions’ that can be used by policy makers when it comes to developing mass behaviour change strategies.

Read the complete report.

WSSCC Webinar: Handwashing and sanitation behaviour change in WASH interventions, 24 October

Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC) would like to invite you to register to the online learning event: Handwashing and sanitation behaviour change in WASH interventions.

A webinar for WASH practitioners.

Learn about the most effective interventions to promote handwashing and sanitation.

Presented by Emmy De Buck, Manager and Lead Researcher, Centre for Evidence-Based Practice, (CEBaP), Belgian Red Cross-Flanders.

Moderated by Chaitali Chattopadhyay, Senior Programme Officer, Monitoring
and Evaluation, WSSCC

To register click here.

Read ahead:

• Policy Brief
• Fact Sheet
• Summary
• Report

Attention is increasingly focusing on programme design and approaches that promote water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) behaviour change in efforts to achieve UN Sanitation Goal 6. Several approaches have been developed over the last 2 decades that promote uptake of WASH interventions and sustain WASH behaviour change. While the evidence base for interventions in low and medium-income countries is extensive, there is a gap in behaviour change approaches in WASH interventions.

The International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie), in partnership with the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC), funded a systematic review to help fill in this evidence gap. It looked at which promotional approaches might change handwashing and sanitation behaviour, and which implementation factors affect the success or failure of such promotional approaches. It synthesises evidence from 42 quantitative studies on the effectiveness of behaviour change approaches and 28 qualitative studies on the implementation of such programme.

Join the webinar on 24th October 2017 for the launch of this recent systematic review “Approaches to promote handwashing and sanitation behaviour change in low- and middle-income countries.”

World Bank targets smarter sanitation communication for rural Ethiopia

By Peter McIntyre, IRC Associate

The World Bank in Ethiopia has commissioned a rapid survey of what motivates people to upgrade their latrines, with the aim of delivering behaviour change communication materials with greater impact.

Sanitation rapid survey launch meeting Addis Abeba, 23 March 2017 (Photo: Sirak Wondimu)

The survey is being conducted in four regions, with the main target audiences being adult women, male heads of households, opinion leaders and existing sanitation businesses.

The aim is to pilot and produce materials that emphasise the dignity, prestige and status of having improved sanitation, rather than focusing only on health messages.

The WB decided a new approach was needed after Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) figures for 2016 suggested that only 4% of rural households in Ethiopia have improved toilets facilities while a further 2% have facilities that would be considered improved if they were not shared. This is well below the Joint Monitoring Program figure of 28% for improved latrines (although we understand this may be revised down to around 14%). Indeed, according to DHS, although access to some form of sanitation has risen, access to an improved latrine has declined in percentage terms over the past ten years. Most latrines in rural areas (55%) do not have an effective slab or lid while more than a third of rural households (39%) practise open defecation.

The Government of Ethiopia has a flagship programme to increase use of improved latrines to 82% by 2020.

At a launch meeting in Addis on 23 March 2017, social market consultant, Addis Meleskachew, said that this initiative will develop a memorable brand for marketing materials that will encourage the private sector to provide materials and will attract rural families to buy them.

Dagnew Tadesse,Hygiene and Environmental Health Case Team Leader for Ministry of Health, welcomed the initiative to attract business but emphasised that the GoE approach is based on a comprehensive health education strategy with multiple messages including hygiene awareness, handwashing and safe food, and said that these important messages should not be abandoned.

Jane Bevan, rural WASH Manager at UNICEF Ethiopia offered to share extensive data that UNICEF has collected for its country programme on attitudes to sanitation, which has identified the high cost of concrete slabs as a significant obstacle. She presented examples of low cost options for upgrading sanitation in a pilot project in Tigray region. It was agreed to collate all existing KAP studies and relevant data including research by SNV.

Monte Achenbach from PSI and John Butterworth from IRC spoke about the work being started by USAID Transform WASH to market innovative sanitation models. John Butterworth said there is a need to make people aware of what is available and to get materials to where they are needed.

The World Bank research is being conducted by 251 Communications.

This blog was originally posted on 5 April 2017 on the IRC website.

Changing behaviours: there is no quick fix!

Experts come up with better ways to promote sanitation in India.

School toilets, West Bengal, India, Photo: Stef Smits/India

India is home to the largest numbers of open defecators in the world. Over the last few decades the government has implemented national programmes, which attempted to address this complex challenge. The demand for sanitation, meaning a genuine demand for toilets and actual use, hasn’t been encouraging. In October 2014, the government launched the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM), a national programme to eliminate open defecation by 2019. SBM has a rural (gramin) and an urban subcomponent.

Dialogue on behaviour change communication

On 23 September 2016, experts met in New Delhi to discuss how behaviour change communication (BCC) can best help to achieve India’s sanitation goals. They were invited by the India Sanitation Coalition, TARU and IRC to take part in “Insights: WASH Dialogues on Sanitation Promotion and Behavioural Science“.

When we set out to improve life for others without a fundamental understanding of their point of view and quality of experience, we do more harm than good (Lauren Reichelt, 2011)

Sector experts and experts involved in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives in sanitation, argued that it is crucial not just to look at how behaviour change interventions work, but also to understand what doesn’t work. There is general agreement that “soft interventions” are important at the community level to ensure that toilets are not just built but also used. Despite all the investments in sanitation over the years, little has been achieved in sanitation. There seems to be a gap between the planning of behaviour change communication interventions and how they are actually implemented.

Nudge for good: How insights from behavioral economics can improve the world— and manipulate people

Nudge for good: How insights from behavioral economics can improve the world— and manipulate people | Source: World Bank Blog, Aug 16 2016 |

Richard H. Thaler is a world-renowned behavioral economist and professor of finance and psychology. Recently, he was interviewed by The Economist. The discussion covers some of the fundamental studies in the field, like “save more tomorrow” which encourages people to save more by signing up to increase their savings rate every year and auto-enrollment for pensions that have drastically increased employee participation in pension funds. 

Thaler also suggests, in the interview, that behavioral economics has the ability to influence human behavior for both good and bad.  He argues that much of what behavioral economics does is remove barriers.

The goal is not to change people but to make life easier, but that idea can be skewed by organizations or individuals looking to capitalize on the biases of people. Whenever he is asked to sign a copy of his book Nudge, he writes “nudge for good” which is a plea, he says, to improve the lives of people and avoid insidious behavior.

The list of ways companies nudge behavior is endless, and I would love to hear more examples from you all in the comments section. In the meantime here are a few- I’ll let you judge which ones “nudge for good”:

• Waterborne diseases such as cholera cause widespread illness, especially among children, in developing countries without nation-wide water and sanitation networks. In Kenya, chlorine tablets are distributed by NGOs and other organizations, and people generally understand that the tablets disinfect their water, protecting them from disease. Nevertheless, usage rates are often low. Cost is not the barrier here, convenience is because routinely purifying water requires energy and attention. Michael Kremer of Harvard University and his colleagues found, through a series of randomized controlled trials conducted in Kenya, that providing chlorine as a concentrated liquid at prominently displayed dispensers at local water sources dramatically increase the rate of disinfection. The dispensers provided a visual reminder when and water was collected and made it easy to add the right does. Along with promotion by community members, this approach increased chlorine use by 53%. Thus, making it easier to disinfect water increased the rates at which tablets are used.

Read the complete article.

Nudging and Habit Change for Open Defecation: New Tactics from Behavioral Science

Nudging and Habit Change for Open Defecation: New Tactics from Behavioral Science, March 2016. 

• Full text, pdf

Authors: David Neal, Ph.D. (Catalyst), Jelena Vujcic, M.P.H. (Catalyst), Rachel Burns Ph.D. (Catalyst), Wendy Wood, Ph.D. (University of Southern California) and Jacqueline Devine, MBA (World Bank, Water and Sanitation Program)

In this working paper, we draw on basic scientifc fndings from psychology, cognitive science, and behavioral economics to propose a framework of 8 System 1 Principles to support the initiation and maintenance of OD behavior change.

In doing so, we build from the general framework advanced in the World Bank Group’s (2015) World Development Report: Mind, Society, and Behavior, which emphasized three core insights from behavioral science, namely that people think (a) automatically, (b) socially and (c) using mental models that channel their decision-making.