Webinar – Contribution of Community-Led Total Sanitation to Ending Open Defecation: Findings of a Desk Review

Webinar – Contribution of Community-Led Total Sanitation to Ending Open Defecation: Findings of a Desk Review, December 14, 2017. 

• Link to Webinar

On Wednesday, December 13, 2017, the USAID-funded Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Partnerships and Learning for Sustainability (WASHPaLS) Project held a webinar on the role of community-led total sanitation (CLTS) in helping to end open defecation.

WASHPaLS presented key findings from a desk review assessing the knowledge base on CLTS program performance. The findings and identified evidence gaps will inform the WASHPaLS research agenda for subsequent years of the project.

 

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USAID/WASHPaLS webinar on CLTS and open defecation

The USAID-funded Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Partnerships and Learning for Sustainability (WASHPaLS) Project invites you to a webinar examining how community-led total sanitation (CLTS) has contributed to the goal of ending open defecation.

WASHPaLS will present key findings from a desk review assessing the knowledge base on CLTS program performance. The findings and identified evidence gaps will inform the WASHPaLS research agenda for subsequent years of the project. Please view the invitation below for more information and to register.

Register and learn more: https://www.bigmarker.com/waterckm/WASHPaLs-review

Q&A: Kamal Kar on ending open defecation

Q&A: Kamal Kar on ending open defecation. Devex, November 21, 2017.

PHNOM PENH — There are 13 years to go to reach the Sustainable Development Goals, including SDG 6.2, which mandates the end of open defecation. In the two years since the SDGs launched, only one developing country — Bangladesh — has reached the mark. That leaves 892 million people in scores of countries who are still practicing open defecation. Across the globe, some 4.5 billion people have no access to a safely managed toilet.  

Life without a toilet is more than an inconvenience. Open defecation increases the incidents of diarrhea, cholera, malnutrition, and more, raising the rates of stunting, disease, and death. That, in turn, impacts everything from productivity to economic growth. In 2015, Oxford Economics and WaterAid estimated the global cost to the economy of poor sanitation to be $222.9 billion.

For Dr. Kamal Kar, the founder of Community Led Total Sanitation, the next few years will prove a make-or-break time for the issue. “In the next four or five years of SDG, we at least have to have two, three, or four open-defecation-free nations, otherwise forget the dream of ODF world by 2030,” said Kar.

Read the complete article.

Equality and non-discrimination (EQND) in sanitation programmes at scale (part 1)

Equality and non-discrimination (EQND) in sanitation programmes at scale (part 1 of 2), August 2017. Sarah House, Sue Cavill and Suzanne Ferron. CLTS Knowledge Hub.

A well-facilitated Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) programme that pro-actively considers and involves people who might be disadvantaged has been shown to have many benefits.  A lack of this can and will often have negative impacts and make programmes and ODF unsustainable.

This issue of Frontiers of CLTS looks at who should be considered potentially disadvantaged, how they can effectively participate and what may be needed to address diverse needs in order to make processes and outcomes sustainable and inclusive.

Using a range of examples from GSF programmes that were part of a recent study on Equality and Non-Discrimination, it explores the challenges that may occur and concludes with suggested good practices that will strengthen the processes to the benefit of all.

Global Waters: In Mali, Communities Take Health and Well-Being into their Own Hands

In Mali, Communities Take Health and Well-Being into their Own Hands. Global Waters, July 18, 2017.

In the center of Simaye village in Mali’s Mopti Region, men, women, and children gather under a large tree to listen. Two USAID-trained facilitators discuss the health challenges facing the village.

Tackling open defecation in communities is a starting point for improved health. Ensuring the drinking water sources are clean is another. USAID works with local artisans in communities like Anga to repair or rehabilitate artesian drilling, such as this one, as an incentive to become ODF-certified. Photo Credit: CARE Mali

Only three latrines serve many families, so more than half of the people are practicing open defecation; the water point no longer functions, so most families are pulling dirty water from the river; many of the infants and young children are not benefitting from exclusive breastfeeding or a diversified diet, so they are malnourished.

Holding a glass of clear water and pointing to feces on the ground, the facilitators paint a clear picture of the health risks associated with leaving feces in the open — contaminated drinking sources, diarrheal disease, and poor outcomes for children and their families.

Their objective: to trigger a sense of disgust, a determination in the community to control their own health and well-being, and to set in motion plans and solutions to create open defecation free (ODF) communities through a process known as community-led total sanitation (CLTS).

Read the complete article.

The true costs of participatory sanitation

Plan International USA and The Water Institute at UNC have conducted the first study to present comprehensive, accurate, disaggregated costs of a WaSH behaviour-change programme.  The study calculated programme costs, and local investments for four community-led total sanitation (CLTS) interventions in Ghana and Ethiopia.

Jonny Crocker, Darren Saywell, Katherine F. Shields, Pete Kolsky, Jamie Bartram, The true costs of participatory sanitation : evidence from community-led total sanitation studies in Ghana and Ethiopia. Science of The Total Environment, vol. 601–602, 1 Dec 2017, pp: 1075-1083. DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.05.279 [Open access]

Abstract

Evidence on sanitation and hygiene program costs is used for many purposes. The few studies that report costs use top-down costing methods that are inaccurate and inappropriate. Community-led total sanitation (CLTS) is a participatory behaviour-change approach that presents difficulties for cost analysis. We used implementation tracking and bottom-up, activity-based costing to assess the process, program costs, and local investments for four CLTS interventions in Ghana and Ethiopia. Data collection included implementation checklists, surveys, and financial records review. Financial costs and value-of-time spent on CLTS by different actors were assessed. Results are disaggregated by intervention, cost category, actor, geographic area, and project month. The average household size was 4.0 people in Ghana, and 5.8 people in Ethiopia. The program cost of CLTS was $30.34–$81.56 per household targeted in Ghana, and $14.15–$19.21 in Ethiopia. Most program costs were from training for three of four interventions. Local investments ranged from $7.93–$22.36 per household targeted in Ghana, and $2.35–$3.41 in Ethiopia. This is the first study to present comprehensive, disaggregated costs of a sanitation and hygiene behaviour-change intervention. The findings can be used to inform policy and finance decisions, plan program scale-up, perform cost-effectiveness and benefit studies, and compare different interventions. The costing method is applicable to other public health behaviour-change programs.

USAID GWASH – Lessons Learned: Hybrid CLTS Approach to Improving Sanitation

GHANA WASH PROJECT: Lessons Learned: Hybrid CLTS Approach to Improving Sanitation, 2014. 

• Full text

USAID’s Ghana Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (GWASH) Project aimed to improve rural sanitation access through the provision of household latrines to households in targeted communities. In the beginning of the project, GWASH used a “high-subsidy” approach for household latrine provision, providing households with a 60 percent subsidy per latrine.

It was in this vein that GWASH aimed to meet its project target of constructing 4,680 household latrines over the course of a four-year period. During the second year of the project, the Government of Ghana (GOG) implemented a new sanitation policy that promoted a pure Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) approach.

The strategy is a no-subsidy approach that emphasizes community-level demand creation for sanitation improvements aimed at stopping open defecation and supporting household and community efforts to independently construct improved household latrines.