Woreda (District) Resource Book: Community-Led Total Behaviour Change in Hygiene and Sanitation

According to the authors, this 85-page guide is intended to guide regional, district, and local practitioners, as well as to provide technical assistance to understand and undertake a community-led approach to reaching total behaviour change in hygiene and sanitation at scale. The guide offers the basic tenets of a learning-by-doing approach, incorporating a hybrid of Community-led Total Sanitation, state-of-the-art household and community behaviour change techniques, and a “Whole System in the Room” multi-stakeholder process. It is based on the experiences of the water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) movement in Amhara Region of 20 million in Northern Ethiopia.

This guide outlines 12 key steps that have been developed based on the idea that people learn by doing, and provides tested guidance for practitioners on the steps, responsibilities, and available resources to support the particular phase. Links to more detailed resources, such as training guides, electronic budgeting forms, and suggested baseline and monitoring forms, are included. These steps can be customised to fit different circumstances and tailored to community settings with diverse cultures. The 12 key steps are identified as follows:

1. Preplanning;
2. Capacity building;
3. Baseline data collection and analysis;
4. "Whole System in a Room" multi-stakeholder meeting;
5. Develop a plan and budget;
6. Kebele (larger village) ignition and action;
7. Gott (50-house village) ignition and action;
8. Promoting a range of WASH technology options;
9. WASH institutional ignition, focusing on WASH Friendly Schools;
10. Multiplying the message through communication and media;
11. Supportive supervision, monitoring, and reporting; and
12. Evaluation and rewarding.