Everyone on North Tarawa now has access to improved sanitation. Photo: ABC Radio Australia / UNICEF Pacific.

North Tarawa in Kiribati is the first island in the Pacific to be declared open defecation free, thanks to the “Kiriwatsan I Project”. The Ministry of Public Works is implementing this project with technical support from UNICEF and funding from the European Union.

North Tarawa is made up of a string of islets with a combined population of 6,102 (2010) and a land area of 15.26 sq.km.  Previously about 64 per cent of people used the beaches and mangroves for defecation and dumping their rubbish.

UNICEF spokeswoman Nuzhat Shahzadi says that diarrhoeal diseases cause 15 per cent of the deaths of children under five in Kiribati.

In March 2013, North Tarawa adopted the Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) approach following a training of trainers course conducted by Dr Kamal Kar. The CLTS pioneer wrote that he had convinced Kiribati President Anote Tong to set December 2015 as the target date for the whole nation to become open defecation free.

The villagers of North Tarawa dig shallow pits and use local materials like brick and coconut leaves to build the toilet superstructure. They keep water and soap in one corner. After using the toilet, the villagers sprinkle ash to stop the smell and flies getting in, and then keep it covered.

Ms Shahzadi said that the women and girls were very happy that no longer have to go out on the beach in the middle of the night if they need to use the toilet.

Related web sites:

• IDS – Community-Led Total Sanitation
• CLTS Foundation
• IRC – Pan-Africa Programme (CLTS/SLTS/ULTS programme)
• SuSanA Forum – CLTS

Source: UNICEF, 11 May 2013 ; Radio New Zealand International, 13 May 2013 ; ABC Radio Australia, 14 May 2013

Map showing frequency & severity of violence against
women in Bhalswa slum, Delhi. Shirley Lennon/SHARE.

The lack of safe toilets for women and girls is often linked to an increased risk of sexual harassment and rape. Earlier studies [1] from Kenya, Uganda and India, and now a recent BBC news item are some of the few sources to actually quantify this risk.

Senior police official Arvind Pandey from the Indian state of Bihar told the BBC that 400 women would have “escaped” rape in 2012 if they had toilets in their homes. The rapes take place when women go outside to defecate early in the morning and late evening. These “sanitation-related” rapes make up nearly half of the more than 870 cases of rape in Bihar in 2012.

The BBC news item lists three specific cases:

• On 5 May, an 11-year-old girl was raped in Mai village in Jehanabad district when she was going to the field at night
• On 28 April, a young girl was abducted and raped when she had gone out to defecate in an open field in Kalapur village in Naubatpur, 35km (21 miles) from the state capital, Patna
• On 24 April, another girl was raped in similar circumstances on a farm in Chaunniya village in Sheikhpura district. She told the police that two villagers had followed and raped her. One of them has been arrested

In Bihar , 75.8% of homes have no toilet facilities (Census 2011). Some 49% of the households without a toilet wanted one for “safety and security” for women and children, according to a study by Population Service International (PSI),   Monitor Deloitte and Water for People.

[1] Heise, L., 2013. Danger, disgust and indignity : women’s perception of sanitation in informal settlements. Powerpoint presented at “Making connections: Women, sanitation and health”, 29 April 2013, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). Video version available at:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AS9ulpJqh7s

Related news:

• Request for Proposals: The effects of poor sanitation on women and girls in India, Sanitation Updates, 07 Mar 2013
• India, Delhi: how sexual violence against women is linked to water and sanitation, E-Source, 27 Mar 2012

Source: Amarnath Tewary, BBC, 09 May 2013

Septage disposal. Sri Lanka/Nuwara Eliya sanitation project, 2008, Photo: Flickr/USAID.

An international research institute is helping the government of Sri Lanka to improve septage management in the country.

On 8 May 2013, the Colombo-based International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and the Ministry of Water Supply and Drainage signed a Memorandum of Understanding that provides a collaborative framework for sustainable septage management in Sri Lanka.

IWMI will contribute research data for the drafting of a septage management component of the national sanitation policy. The Ministry will lead implementation of the policy through an advisory committee headed by Minister Dinesh Gunawardena.

Only about 3% of Sri Lankans have a sewerage connection while the rest rely on latrines and septic tanks for sanitation. Safe disposal of septage (fecal sludge) is a problem because of a lack of treatment facilities in large parts of the country.

IWMI is studying a new approach in cities around the world, which treats the sludge so that it can be safely reused as agricultural fertiliser. With the rising costs of imported fertiliser, such an approach would not only benefit farmers but also allow better sanitation and environmental protection for all.

Related news:

• The business of the honey-suckers in Bengaluru (India), E-Source, 27 Sep 2012
• WASHplus Weekly: Focus on Fecal Sludge Management, Sanitation Updates, 30 Nov 2012

Related web sites:

• IWMI - Resource Recovery and Re-use
• Ministry of Water Supply and Drainage
• SuSanA - WG 5 – Food security and productive sanitation systems and Library – Fecal sludge management

 Source: IWMI, 8 May 2013

Reblogged from Sanitation Updates:

Reblogged from Sanitation Updates:

Reblogged from Sanitation Updates:

Armed with smart phones, 30 teams consisting of one male and one female staff member have been collecting WASH data in sample areas of the BRAC WASH programme. Each team gets 6 days training in QIS – the Qualitative Information System, a participatory method for capturing and quantifying respondents’ situation regarding WASH issues. The BRAC monitoring teams visit households, village WASH committees, schools and rural sanitation centres.

QIS uses a 0 to 4 scoring system, in which 0 means the desired situation is non-existent, 2 is the benchmark indicating that all programme expectations have been met, and 4 is the ideal situation.

“With QIS you learn how to question to get the real situation” says Ms. Ahmed. “QIS scoring is done by observation of proof, you need for example to see a register to monitor the village WASH committees”, she explains.

“It has been a large learning experience for me”, Ms Ahmed reveals. “Things that are important, but usually unnoticed, are more easily identified”. As an example, she mentions knowledge of what happens to sludge and people’s attitudes about it. Are latrines being used by all household members or not? This kind of knowledge would have been more difficult to capture by other monitoring systems, according to Ms. Ahmed.

The participatory nature of QIS means that respondents also benefit, according to Ms Ahmed. “It raises awareness about their situation, where they are now and where they should be”.

Analysis of the monitoring data is now underway.

For more on the BRAC WASH II programme go to: www.irc.nl/page/69649 and wash.brac.net

For more on QIS see: www.irc.nl/page/37607

Participatory monitoring features briefly as one the activities in a new promotional video about the BRAC WASH programme.

Babar Kabir. Photo: BRAC

Babar Kabir is the Senior Director at BRAC and programme director of the BRAC WASH programme. He talks to IRC’s Joep Verhagen about this huge programme, the importance of the Village WASH Committee, and emerging sanitation innovations.

Could you briefly describe the BRAC WASH programme? 

BRAC WASH II aims for a sustained change —a measurable leap – in personal/family hygiene, sanitation and water safety for all.  We aim to create a sanitation and hygiene movement in Bangladesh that is lasting and will benefit everybody.  However, such changes in practices (such as hand washing with soap, continued use and maintenance of latrines, using safe water sources or keeping water safe from source to mouth) take time to root. Behaviour change takes time and does not move at the same speed everywhere.

The first BRAC WASH programme was funded by the Government of the Netherlands (DGIS) and over a period of around 5 years in 150 Upazillas we managed to ensure that around 25 million people were using hygienic and safe latrines, we reached more than 38 million people with our hygiene promotion programme and about 1.8 million people were assured of access to safe drinking water.  The BRAC WASH II programme is jointly funded by Embassy of the Kingdom of The Netherlands (EKN)/DGIS and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF).  This programme seeks to sustain the outcomes of the BRAC WASH I programme in the 150 Upazillas of the BRAC WASH programmes and we will be covering the last mile in these Upazillas.  In addition, it targets 25 new hard-to-reach Upazillas.  In these new Upazillas, we aim that 2 million people will be using a safe latrine and 0.5 million people at the end of the programme. In addition, our hygiene promotion programme will promote safe behaviour to 4.2 million people.  Recently, work has started in 73 Upazillas with support from DFID.  So in  total, BRAC is implementing its WASH programmes in 248 Upazillas and reaching out to 55 million people. That is about half the rural population of Bangladesh. During the last 2 years we are collaborating intensively with IRC who are providing inputs in various areas, including monitoring and documentation.  It is a partnership that is based on mutual trust and respect for each other’s roles and inputs.

Who is implementing this huge programme?

We have a small core team that is based in Dhaka but the majority – about 99% – of our staff is field based.  The BRAC WASH programme has around 9,000 staff. They are supported by BRAC’s 80,000 health volunteers and 46,000 Village WASH Committees.  It is this huge army of WASH foot soldiers that is driving the programme.  BRAC’s health volunteers work as community volunteers for the different BRAC programmes; the BRAC WASH programme is one of them.  In return for their work and support they are allowed to keep a margin on the various health products that they are selling in the community. They are also supported in hygiene promotion by over 30,000 BRAC primary school teachers.

How important is the Village WASH Committee? 

The VWC is crucial.  Though they are called Village WASH Committees, there is a committee for each cluster of around 200 households.  Experience has taught us that 200 households is the right number that can be supported by one committee.  The itself committee consists of 11 members, six women and five men. They make annual plans to improve sanitation in the village, and meet every two months to assess progress and to identify emerging problems. VWC members select sites for community water sources, mobilise funds from local people and organisations to invest in improving the village’s sanitation, and identify households to receive sanitation grants from BRAC and the government’s Annual Development Programme.

One of the first things that we do when BRAC first starts to work in a village is identifying members for the VWC.  This is done through a series of meetings that BRAC staff hold with different groups of people in the community – women, men, adolescent boys and girls, and children. BRAC offers three-day leadership training sessions to two members of each committee, one woman and one man. The BRAC programme organizers and programme assistants provide continuous support to the VWCs.  They visit each VWC in a 45-to-60 day cycle.  They oversee the bimonthly meetings and hold their own meetings to encourage behavioural change among girls, boys and women. The second phase of the project will see more attention to reaching out to men, through tea stall sessions.

The Kadigor VWC examines its village map. Photo: IRC/Dick de Jong, 2013.

In our annual monitoring cycled we learned that (let me quote): “Most participation in VWC is about being there and being part of the decision making process. It is less about speaking-up. Lack of communication skills is the most common reason for not speaking up. VWC members improve their confidence and their skills. (Personal) reputation increases for only a few and power is rarely a benefit of being a VWC member. Despite this VWC members get (greater) respect from others and especially women. The strength of the VWCs are its teamwork and wide community representation. There is  little resistance to people’s participation in the VWC, but when there is resistance it comes from villagers in the stories of non-poor and poor female members of the VWC. Stories of hardcore poor rarely involve resistance to participation with VWC”.   We also found that 99% of the sampled committees meet the administrative qualifications such as regular meetings and keeping minutes. However, we need to support the VWCs more in accessing government funds as we found that part of the sampled VWCs is not yet doing this.

I know that you could talk much longer about the BRAC WASH programme but what kind of innovations have emerged from it?

Many people associate innovations with large radical change but at BRAC we have learnt that innovation often happens in small incremental steps based on lessons that emerge from implementing at scale.  That is the other thing that we have learnt at BRAC too; often new things are tried at a small scale with the purpose to gradually scale them up. Too often this does not work as there are totally different factors at play once you start implementing at scale. Sir Abed – founder and chairperson of BRAC – once said that small is beautiful but scale is necessary. However, to get to your question. There are many lessons that we have learnt that we intend to share with sector in the coming years.  The  overall implementation strategy would be one of them but also various innovative improvements to current sanitation and drinking water supply technologies are emerging.  We are working on different solutions for the productive use of faecal sludge from the pit latrines and with support of DGIS we are initiating an action research programme that will look into issues such as low-cost sanitation technologies for areas with high water tables, low-cost treatment methods for the sludge from single pit latrines, etc.

What has the future in stock? 

As a country Bangladesh is doing progressing well towards proving safe and sustainable sanitation for everybody.  However, providing sanitation in the hard to reach areas will require innovative solutions.  Moreover, all these pits are filling up and as a sector we have not found a solution that is environmentally and financially sustainable and works at a large scale.  However, globally sanitation and hygiene needs a huge concerted effort as sanitation is not only a matter of health but also of human rights and human dignity.

This is the second in a series of blog posts on IRC’s work on scaling up sanitation and hygiene services that last. The first was on sanitation monitoring in Bangladesh.

Joep Verhagen, Manager, South Asia & Latin America Team, IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre

Qualitative Information System (QIS) based on Sanitation Ladders

Preparation for this upcoming workshop started a year ago, with a joint BRAC – IRC workshop to design a Qualitative Information System (QIS). QIS is a monitoring system that allows the quantification of qualitative information, such as the quality of latrines, the use of latrines, the participation of women in management and decision making and so on. The underlying assumption is that change takes place gradually and to capture this gradual change we have developed progressive scales (‘ladders’). Each step on the ladder has a short description, called a mini-scenario, which describes the situation that signifies a particular score. The ladder below was developed to measure the quality of household latrines.

In total, 15 ladders have been developed to capture the key outcomes of the BRAC WASH programme: 3 for the Village WASH committees, 6 to measure the quality of sanitation and hygiene services at the household level, 1 indicator to measure the quality of water resources in the community, 4 indicators to measure the quality of WASH in schools, and finally 1 indicator to measure the quality of rural sanitation marts.  More information on the QIS can be found at the IRC website.

Since, the first workshop the QIS monitoring system has gone through a number of rounds of testing and adaptation.  A mobile phone application has been developed to make it possible to collect data with a mobile phone. The BRAC team pulled off an incredible effort by interviewing more than 6,000 sampled households across the project area. Right now we are analysing the data that will be presented during our monitoring and learning workshop.

SenseMaker®

Besides QIS, we have used another innovative monitoring approach: SenseMaker®. This is an approach to narrative-based research that relies on a software platform for data analysis. The sense making methodology draws heavily on complexity thinking but in a nutshell it can be best summarised as follows:

• We learn a lot from stories that are being told by our colleagues, stories that we hear from people in the villages. Stories often tell us more than a table full of data.
• However, there is a limit to how many stories you can tell and how many stories we can listen to.  Hence, a methodology has been developed to help us analyse and learn from many stories that are being told by many different people.
• SenseMaker® will help us to understand the average of many stories (the wisdom of crowds) but it will also help us to see the outliers – the first signs of a new trend – more clearly.
• You need to know a bit more about the person telling the story to understand it. Think about a broken leg example. For a doctor it refers to someone who has broken their leg; for a bowler it means that he has bowled a ball with a special kind of effect, and for a gunda (bad character) in a village it can mean that he has broken someone’s leg who did not obey him.
• For that reason, we have developed the SenseMaker® framework. It helps us to understand better who is telling the story and what the story means.
• When we analyse, we first look at what the stories mean to someone and only after that we might decide to open and read certain stories.

Collecting stories. Photo: Dick de Jong

Grasping the logic of the methodology, making it work, and analysing the data definitely proved to be a challenge for all of us and without support of an external expert we would never have managed. But after developing a sense-making framework, training the story collectors, and collecting more than 1,000 stories our efforts are paying very interesting and insightful dividends. One of the interesting – but very preliminary – findings is that: “The strengths of the Village WASH Committees (VWCs) are its wide community representation and the sense of teamwork. There is little resistance to the participation in the VWC but when it is there it comes from within the household (for women) and from the wider community (for the non-poor). However, we also found that working for the VWC comes both with a level of frustration but also with a feeling of satisfaction.“

This is the first in series of blogs on IRC’s work on scaling up sanitation and hygiene services that last.

Joep Verhagen, Manager, South Asia & Latin America Team, IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre

The IRC International Water and Sanitation is developing a field tool that delivers, within just one week, a one-page overview matching sanitation supply and demand.

The tool, a sanitation marketing dashboard, was tested in two unions in one of the upazilas (sub-districts) covered by the BRAC WASH II programme.

Preliminary results revealed for instance that the quality of construction and hygiene promotion needed improvement.

An updated version of the tool will be used in six to nine representative upazilas in the BRAC WASH II programme.

For more information contact: Erick Baetings or Ingeborg Krukkert at IRC.

IRC-BRAC WASH II
Sanitation Demand and Supply Study

Source: Erick Baetings, IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre