MEANING AND UNDERSTANDING

Water Supply:

• local and plentiful water supply is a key input to improvements in sanitation and hygiene practices, which is why Water, Sanitation & Hygiene (WASH) are so commonly considered together.

• Before a plentiful local water supply, marketing better sanitation and hygiene practices would not have led to any change in people’s behaviour.

Marketing - we implement a variety of tried and tested approaches that together drive home the message that ‘now there is water, there are significant benefits to communities and individuals improving their sanitation & hygiene practices’. These approaches include:

• Empowered World View

  • as described in the Livelihood & Wellbeing page, this World Vision programme focuses on changing mindsets so that people recognise their own ability to affect their circumstances and future. While this approach does not focus on changing any specific behaviour, it sets the stage for more focussed Sanitation & Hygiene Marketing.

• Village Sanitation & Hygiene Committee (VSHC) Training

  • VSHCs are trained to collaborate with local artisans to build covered latrines.

  • Explore and address challenges that hinder community members from having improved sanitation and hygiene infrastructure.

  • VSHCs conduct household visits to sensitise and educate households on best practices such as the use of improved toilets, proper hand-washing and water safety.

• Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLST)

  • an integrated approach to help communities stop open defecation and improve sanitation and hygiene, involving: 

    • Community analysis: Communities analyze their sanitation practices, waste disposal, and the consequences of open defecation 

    • Community discussions: Facilitators lead discussions to highlight the health risks of unsanitary practices 

    • Transect walks: Facilitators lead transect walks to make communities aware of their open defecation sites 

    • Collective action: Communities take collective action to become open defecation free (ODF) 

    • Latrine construction: Communities build and use latrines

• School WASH (SWASH) Clubs

  • An approach that use school students as an agent of change to transform households and communities risks behaviours that lead to waterborne and hygiene related diseases such as diarrhoea and cholera outbreaks . That approach involve:-

    • Training SWASH Teachers: Teachers are trained on the sanitation and hygiene best practices (behaviours) to ensure transferring of knowledge to their students by establishing SWASH Clubs

    • Establish SWASH Clubs: Teachers establish SWASH Clubs with a maximum of 50 members (students) per school.

      • SWASH Clubs are given roles to play so as to empower student’s skills, knowledge and attitudes towards sanitation and hygiene behaviours. Those roles include:-

        • clean school environment including toilets and hand wash facilities

        • raise awareness to peer groups (i.e. school colleagues) on sanitation and hygiene key messages through focus groups discussion, meetings, debates, and playing games

        • maintain sanitation and hygiene infrastructures (i.e. water distribution points, hand wash point and toilets)

        • install billboards to school compounds to address key sanitation and hygiene messages

        • disseminate key sanitation and hygiene messages through information, education and communication (IEC) materials such as flyers, posters or banners.

Infrastructure:

• Toilet stalls in schools for privacy.

• Taps and sinks schools for hygiene and to instil behavioural change.

• Waste disposal equipment for girls.

Product Supply:

• Motivating communities to adopt safe sanitation and behaviour practices is an important piece of the puzzle. However, a robust supply side of sanitation and hygiene products must also exist for communities to change their behaviors.

• That is where sanitation marketing comes in, which works to connect community members to sanitation and hygiene products, such as cement and SATO pans.

• We have taken that one step further with our Impact Enhancer: Sanitation Product Supply.  This goes beyond making connections to actually bringing the product to the community.