Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) Training in Ethiopia

The approach involves training a number of local people in CLTS principles and methods. This is followed by field exercises where participants have the opportunity to work with communities from different villages on the issue of open defaecation. Trainers invite communities to a participatory workshop, where participants identify common areas of defaecation, calculate the amount of faeces produced by the community, examine what happens to the faeces (i.e. how it gets into their water and food sources), discuss the dangers of not having good sanitation practices, and receive information about how to build latrines with locally available materials.

Trainers found that each step in the process contributes toward empowering the community, and triggering and provoking action in sanitation. Participants are encouraged to develop their own solutions simply because they are good for the community, without depending on an outside organisation for resources. The workshop is designed to allow participants to hold their own discussions on the issues and decide when and how to proceed. Communities also devise their own slogans to promote good sanitation practices and their own enforcement methods. For example, one community's solution to deter open defaecation was to make anyone caught defaecating in the open carry their own faeces to the nearest latrine. Finally, a celebration to declare Fura Kebele open-daefecation-free was held where poems, drama, and choral songs condemning open defaecation and promoting safe sanitation and hygiene behaviour were presented by community members. Certificates were awarded to the health extension workers, village health communicators, community natural leaders, and community members who worked to end open daefecation in Fura.

Health, Sanitation.

According to the organisers, open defaecation is a major contributory factor to the high incidence of diarrhoea in the country, which causes 46% of childhood deaths.