Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) Approaches to Creating Open Defecation Free (ODF) Community

Photo Credit: sanitationupdates.wordpress.com
Photo Credit: sanitationupdates.wordpress.com

Trigger, a 2012 Annual Report publication on the Pan-African Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) programmes, states that community empowerment and collective behavioral change including safe sanitation and hygiene with hand washing is an effective and sustainable way to creating open defecation free (ODF) community. According to the report, in community mobilization, self empowerment and collective behavioral change  instead of hardware and shifting the focus from toilet construction for individual households to the creation of ODF villages. (CLTS, 2012).

To read more about CLTS and its programmes around the world, click here.

CLTS, was introduced to Africa by Plan International in 2007 as an effective approach to achieving its child survival and millennium development goals (MDGs). So far, implementation of the ten CLTS programmes in African countries helped reduce infant and child morbidity and mortality, and the program has inspired other national, regional, continental  and multi-country sanitation initiatives. (CLTS, 20120). The followings are African countries in which the project was launched: Malawi, Zambia, Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Niger and Tanzania.

To read and download the CLTS programmes and its progress in Africa, click here.

Source: Institute of Development Studies (IDS)