South Sudan: Community Led Total Sanitation project in Lologo South

In September 2010, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded, Management Sciences for Health (MSH)-led Sudan Health Transformation Project, Phase 2 (SHTP II) piloted a 3-month Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) project to determine the most effective strategies to increase sanitary defecation methods in Southern Sudan. CLTS motivates or “triggers” communities’ desire for change and influences them to create “open defecation –free” sites, through the construction and utilization of latrines.

In Lologo South, a residential community just south of Juba, thousands of new houses, fences, and animal carrels are in various states of construction.  And importantly, thanks to MSH, there are also latrines.

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Source: Mary Burket, Management Sciences for Health / allAfrica.com, 5 July 2011

Sierra Leone: Traditional Leaders Undergo Training on Community-Led Sanitation

On Friday April 8th, 2011 the Agency for Community Empowerment Participation and Transformation (ACEPT) organized a two-day intensive training in Henai town in Malen chiefdom, Pujehun district, for 30 traditional leaders assembled from towns and villages. The facilitators came from Pujehun District’s Health Management Team. The training, first of its kind, primarily focused on community-led total sanitation designed to step-up awareness and help provide the communities with tools to handle basic health problems within their localities. Giving an overview of the Project, National Coordinator, Earnest Alpha, said that at the close of the training the individual community will have appreciated the importance of having toilet facilities alongside the proper use of the acquired water wells which, he stated, are always monitored for the good use of the localities.
ACEPT, the National Coordinator said, has been implementing food for work under the sponsorship of United Nation World Food Programme during which vast plantations were brushed and rehabilitated for the first time after the protracted RUF rebel war, and that systematic awareness raising on the deadly HIV and AIDS was also embarked upon with the sponsorship of the United States Embassy which, he added, have equally been very successful. Earlier, both the Project Administrative Director, Allieu Jusu Kebbie and the Field Supervisor, Christopher Abu Baker Bangura, disclosed that UNICEF has approved a school sanitation and health education programme for three primary schools in Malen chiefdom, and that another 30 participants drawn from Galinas Perrie chiefdom were trained in Pujehun District to help carry out the all important aspect of learning to manage basic health activities in their towns and villages.

Source: Easmon Moiguah, AWOKO, 15 April 2011

Africa: Just Building a Million Latrines Won’t Solve Sanitation Crisis

The deadline for the world to meet its millennium development goals is now only four years away, yet in sub-Saharan Africa, there are still 570 million people without adequate sanitation.

Many technologies designed to solve the problems are parachuted. Some work, most don’t. The lesson should be simple: know the area, know the people.

It is only through talking and listening to the people on the ground that we will be able to make long-lasting and sustainable moves out of poverty. This is especially pertinent when trying to educate people about sanitation and hygiene and bringing about a change in behaviour.

Local knowledge is everything. WaterAid conducted its own research across west Africa into different ethnic groups’ attitudes to going to the toilet. The results go some way to explaining why simply building a latrine is only half the battle.

WaterAid is adapting an approach known as community-led total sanitation (CLTS) in west Africa. First conceived in Bangladesh, it is a concept that has been sweeping across south Asia with impressive results, and many are hoping that it can bring similar results to Africa. It is based on an understanding that the people themselves have the solutions and are best able to determine which interventions will enable them to attain a self-defined, collective destiny.

Instead of focusing on the supply and installation of sanitation hardware to communities, CLTS focuses on changing attitudes and behaviour through community mobilisation to stop open defecation, and to build and use latrines.

Participants have reported that they find the approach engaging, participatory and, most notably, empowering – putting them in control of their own destiny, in a context in which, more often than not, death by disease is accepted with fatalistic submission to the ‘will of God’ or the hex of an enemy or the local witch.

Empowering local communities – especially women – with information that allows them to make decisions pertaining to their health and wellbeing ensures that they “own” the desired change. It is they who can be credited for the health benefits of safe sanitation and hygiene practices. It is they who commit to the necessary behaviour change, they who hold themselves and their peers accountable. Here, help is not coming from outside, but from within – and people are in charge of their own destiny.

Source: Juanita During, The Ghanaian Journal, 27 January 2011

Ghana: first National Environmental Sanitation Conference takes place in Kumasi

The government should set up a revolving fund for Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) initiatives, in collaboration with Micro-Finance Institutions (MFIs) and local government. This was one of the recommendations from Ghana’s first National Environmental Sanitation Conference (NESCON).

The conference was held in Kumasi from 8-10 December in Kumasi, Ashanti Region. The theme was “building partnerships for scaling up improved environmental sanitation services”, covering both solid waste management and household sanitation.

The conference presented, among others, highlights of the Environmental Sanitation Policy (Revised 2010), the National Environmental Sanitation Strategy and Action Plan (NESSAP) and the Strategic Environmental Sanitation Investment Plan (SESIP) and District Environmental Sanitation Strategy and Action Plans (DESSAPs).

NESCON 2010 was organised by the Environmental Health and Sanitation Directorate (EHSD) of the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development (MLGRD) in partnership with Development Partners (DPs), Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs), Private Operators and others.

Read the concluding statement and recommendations and all presentations.

Source: Abu Wambei, RCN Ghana, 18 Dec 2010

Nigeria: Canada, NGO partner to tackle diarrhoea

The Canadian Government said it would get communities in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) involved in tackling filthy environment and waste management to eradicate diarrhoea in Nigeria.

Speaking during a community-led sanitation and waste management advocacy in Abuja, a Counsellor at the Canadian High Commission, Mr David Ross, said his country would be part of the eradication process of diarrhoea in Nigeria. He said: “We want to contribute to improved environmental health by addressing behaviour change related to sanitation and waste management in poor and slum areas of Nigeria.”

Speaking earlier, the Executive Director, African Centre for Leadership, Strategy and Development, Dr Otive Igbuzor, said the project, funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), under the Canada Fund for Local Initiatives (CFLI), would address problems of sanitation in Duruni community of the FCT.

He said: “We are committed to clinical implementation of this project which will run for a period of five months which starts from November 2010 so as to achieve its objectives; and the Nigerian government asserts that with better implementation of various policy frameworks and plans for water, sanitation, environment and slum upgrading, Nigeria will be on track to achieve the MDG 7.”

Source: Daniel Okpole, Nigerian Compass, 24 November 2010

Nigeria: 425 communities ‘open defecation free’

No fewer than 425 communities have been declared Open Defecation Free (ODF) in the country, the Chairman, sub-technical Committee on Water Supply and Quality Control, Mr Usang Bassey, said in Jos, the Plateau state capital.

Bassey told the National Technical Committee on Water Resources meeting in Jos, that the declaration was a result of the Community-Led Total Sanitation (CTLS) programme being implemented in the country.

He said CLTS was gaining acceptability among the implementers adding that 30 states were implementing the programme.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the programme was introduced by WaterAid in some communities in Benue state and it had achieved considerable success.

The programme focuses mainly on achieving sustainable behavioural change through motivation and mobilisation of communities to understand the risks associated with open defecation.

According to Bassey, more than 2,654 communities are presently implementing the CLTS and 425 communities have been declared ODF.

“There is an increase in CLTS coverage from 1,887 communities and 299 ODF communities in December 2009 to 2,654 communities and 425 ODF communities in June 2010.

“The National Task Group on Sanitation has carried our monitoring and verification visits to 84 communities in 28 states that have attained the status,’’ he said.

Bassey said the monitoring and verification exercise revealed that CLTS had been adopted in 25 states out of the 28 states visited and was contributing greatly to scaling up building of latrines in the rural areas.

He said there were a lot of successes on CLTS implementation which could help further improve the situation, but were not being captured.

“There are variations in the type of CLTS being implemented across the country and a big gap between triggered communities and the number that have achieved ODF,’’ Bassey said.

He said sanitation should be treated as a priority in its own right and not as an add-on to more attractive water supply programmes.

“CLTS is being adopted as one of the sustainable approaches to attain the MDGs within the sanitation sub-sector.

“An annual national roundtable on CLTS has been instituted and Katsina state is expected to host in 2011,’’ he added.

Source: People’s Daily, 10 November 2010

Nigeria: Minister flays low sanitation coverage

Minister of Water Resources, Chief Obadia Ando, has expressed dissatisfaction with the average sanitation coverage in Nigeria which, he said, is still as low as 45 percent.

Ando said in an address at the 2nd National Round Table Conference on Community-Led Total Sanitation yesterday in Calabar , that most communities in Nigeria are yet to have access to safe means of human waste disposal.

He disclosed that from the baseline survey conducted by the Ministry in 2007, the average sanitation coverage is still as low as 45 per cent, while that of the rural sanitation is about 35 per cent.

Africa: self-help sanitation for more than 2 million people

More than 2 million people and over 740 schools in Africa are getting improved sanitation.

In a new five-year programme, development organisation Plan International will expand its existing self-help sanitation programme in six African countries (Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Zambia and Malawi) and introduce it in two other countries (Ghana and Niger).

The programme aims to implement and promote the Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) approach as it was originally intended: the community is triggered to act by itself towards its development by stopping open defecation and improving hygiene behaviour. There are no toilet subsidies and no financial rewards for eliminating open defecation. Plan and its local partners will carry out CLTS activities in 805 rural communities. Adapted versions of the approach will be used in 36 peri-urban communities and 742 schools.

Besides implementing sanitation projects, the programme will also engage the private sector. It will support local small or medium entrepreneurs to market the construction and maintenance of sanitation facilities.

Another programme element involves setting up national and international CLTS networks. National sanitation networks will not only coordinate programme activities but also lobby for sanitation policies to include CLTS and its adapted approaches in urban areas and schools. The results of the programme will be disseminated, including feed-back to the communities. The IDS website www.communityledtotalsanitation.org is instrumental in the dissemination to the wider audience.

The “Empowering self-help sanitation of rural and peri-urban communities and schools in Africa” project started in December 2009 and runs until December 2014. Plan Netherlands, in collaboration with Plan’s two regional African offices, is the programme’s lead agency. The two other programme partners are the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Sussex, UK and the IRC International Water and Sanitation based in The Netherlands. The total budget for the programme is € 8.4 million, half of which is provided as a grant by the Netherlands Directorate-General for International Cooperation (DGIS), one third are the estimated investments by the communities in their own development, and the remaining part comes via Plan Netherlands from fund raising activities by Dutch primary school children.

For more information read the programme’s executive summary

For more information on CLTS go to www.communityledsanitation.org

Contacts details:

• Plan Nederland, Martin Keijzer, e-mail: Martin.Keijzer@plannederland.nl, www.plannederland.nl
• IDS, Robert Chambers, e-mail: R.Chambers@ids.ac.uk and Petra Bongartz, email: P.Bongartz@ids.ac.uk, www.communityledtotalsanitation.org
• IRC, Marielle Snel, email, snel@irc.nl, www.irc.nl/sanitation

Liberia, Montserrado County: 3 communities in Careysburg District achieve Total Sanitation status

Liberia: Three communities meet CLTS compliance

Three communities in Liberia have been declared open defecation free by the coordinating institutions of the Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) program. The areas according to Public Works release are Sackie Town, Gbokolleh Town and Frank Town, all in Careysburg District, Montserrado County. The Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) approach focuses on igniting a change in hygienic and sanitation behaviors rather than just constructing toilets. The initiation also hopes to see Liberian communities organize themselves in addressing their sanitation needs through collective movement, without subsidies from outside.

CLTS started in Liberia March 30, 2008 and its originated from India by Dr. Kamel Kar, the founder of the organization. The idea was transplanted in Liberia through the instrumentality of UNICEF and the government of Liberia. Since the inception of CLTS in Liberia, about ten (10) communities have been triggered in Todee and Careysburg Districts in Montserrado. CLTS hopes to achieve reduction in water related diseases, community driven in all development initiatives and reduction in environmental pollution.

There are more than fifteen communities in Liberia as a whole trying to obtain ODF status but at present, only three have met the requirements and are going to be certificated during the official launching of the program. The coordinating agencies of CLTS in Liberia are the Ministry of Public Works, Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, UNICEF, SODES and FAAL.

Meanwhile, strategy developed for the Community Led Total Sanitation program will be launched on Saturday, January 23, 2010 in Gbokolleh Town, Careysburg District, Montserrado County. CLTS according to strategy developed hopes to declare 2010 as “National Year of Sanitation in Liberia.” The program is expected to caption the theme “from the bush to the toilet house-communities decide for themselves.”

Related web site: Community-led Total Sanitation

Source – The Liberian Times, 21 Jan 2010

Eritrea: community-led sanitation brings great promise, UNICEF

Encouraging communities to work to improve their health and hygiene means empowering people with the right messages and the means to improve their sanitation systems. In Eritrea, the remote Emberemi village is located in the midst of a powdery pulp of sand. On a typical homestead there are a few houses, a little kraal with cows tethered to wooden posts, and on the corner is a toilet, also constructed of local shrubs. Harsh living conditions don’t trouble the villagers, but were noticeable to a visiting team from UNICEF and the Ministry of Health, who arrived to monitor the community-led total sanitation strategy (CLTS).

A project with promise

CLTS is a revolutionary low-cost approach to rural sanitation where communities are facilitated to assess their own sanitation situation, analyze and take action to stop open defecation and build their own latrines without any subsidy and using locally available materials. In 2010, the Ministry of Health, with the support of UNICEF, plans to enable the 60,000 households countrywide to stop open defecation. According to the latest estimates, only five per cent of Eritrea’s population has access to improved sanitation facilities. The CLTS project bears great promise and could position the country towards achieving the MDG target on sanitation.

Better toilets, better hygiene

The household of villager Amna Abdela Mussa, age 45, was the first to be visited. She paused from her laundry to welcome the team and show them her toilet. “I heard the message from Ministry of Health on the importance of sanitation and I took it upon myself to construct my own toilet,” she said. The toilet also serves as a bathroom and has two off-site pits. On one side is the toilet and on the other side is the seat for bathing and a pit for dirty water. To ensure good hygiene, a small jerry can is positioned at the door. It is tied to a wooden post, with a rope extending from its mouth to a small peg on the ground. The idea behind this is that one does not have to touch the jerry can, but on stepping on the rope, it automatically tilts the jerry can downwards to enable hand washing. A bar of soap is positioned next to it. Ms. Mussa is just one of the many Eritreans who have enthusiastically embraced the CLTS. In 2008, one village was declared and certified to be open defecation free (ODF). In 2009, a momentous community mobilization initiative geared towards collective behaviour change to give up open defecation and take up safe hygiene practices took off, with a total of 11,000 households having stopped open defecation and 11 villages now ODF.

Partnerships for shared success

The momentum gained in sanitation has been made possible through funding from the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development. According to UNICEF’s Chief of Water and Sanitation in Eritrea David Proudfoot, this partnership is key and progress depends very much on sustained funding for the project. “If we are to sustain results and build on the momentum, this funding must continue, it will position Eritrea on the path to achieving the Millennium Development Goal on sanitation,” Mr. Proudfoot said. It is estimated that approximately 448,000 Eritrean households in rural areas need to build and use their own toilet in order to meet the MDG target by 2015. One of the pioneers of the CLTS, Dr. Kamal Kar believes that this target is very much achievable. “Eritrea has great potential to serve as an example to the world given the commitment of the government,” Dr. Kar said.

Source: UNICEF,
http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/eritrea_52289.html
, 31 Dec 2009