Plan UK recently launched a handbook on Community Led Total Sanitation to enable communities analyse their sanitation conditions and collectively understand the impact of open defecation on public health and their environment.

About Community Led Total Sanitation Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) is an approach that focuses on igniting a change in sanitation behaviour through community participation rather than constructing toilets. It does this through a process of social participation. It concentrates on the whole community rather than on individual behaviours and the collective benefit from stopping open defecation can encourage a more cooperative approach. People decide together how they will create a clean and hygienic environment that benefits everyone.

Dr. Kamal Kar and Prof. Robert Chambers, authors of the report, explain; "the method used encourages local communities to visit the dirtiest and filthiest areas in the neighbourhood, appraising and analysing their practices, it shocks, disgusts and shames people. This style is provocative and fun, and is hands-off in leaving decisions and action to the community."

CLTS in action in Ethiopia

Jemal from a village in Ethiopia has seen the benefits of this approach. "I found passersby preparing to defecate in open fields. I shouted loudly and stopped them before they defecated. I am always on the watch-out to keep our village clean and free from open defecation." Together with other community members Jemal has become a guardian of sanitation and hygiene and has called on all villagers to join them.

In their efforts, their village has received support from Plan Ethiopia. "In our village, open defecation is becoming history," says Assefash.

The handbook, supported by DFID, is to serve as a resource book on total sanitation for community members, sanitation practitioners and NGO workers.

Marie Staunton, Plan UK Chief Executive, talking at the launch of the handbook attended by DFID staff, civil servants, international NGOs and academics, called it "an effective resource for international agencies looking to adopt a new approach to sanitation, where instead of subsidising and building latrines communities themselves are empowered to devise their own sanitation system through effective training and facilitation. The CLTS approach as an effective, sustainable, and affordable approach to sanitation that can save lives."

About the authors Kamal Kar is an Independent consultant and Visiting Fellow with the Knowledge, Technology and Society Team of the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex Professor Robert Chambers is a Research Associate of the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex

Handbook on Community Led Total Sanitation (file size= 2.46MB) Download the Handbook