Kamal Kar sent the e-mail below to the SuSanA secretariat, and with his permission, I am now posting it here for all to see and react on (posted by Elisabeth von Muench):

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Dear All,
Greetings from Calcutta. I hope you are keeping fine.
Recently I was in Kigali, Rwanda for the third Africa San Conference. I was overwhelmed to see how much CLTS has grown all over the African continent in just over four years. There was hardly any session where CLTS was not discussed. At least 12 african countries have either adopted CLTS in their respective National Sanitation strategies or have been implementing it at some scale. More than 24 countries in Eastern, Southern, Central and Western Africa have already introduced CLTS and are making fairly good progress. Where as in Asia the picture is different. Apart from the government of Indonesia I am not sure if any country has included CLTS in the national sanitation strategy. However, some have made remarkable progress in sanitation using CLTS approach. I am attaching a pdf version of my recent publication on CLTS in Africa (IDS Practice Paper) entitled "Digging in Spreading out and Growing up: Introducing CLTS in Africa" for you all. I thought you might find it interesting reading. My greetings to all friends and colleagues in your organisation and in your country.
All the best,
Kamal Kar

Link to the paper which he mentioned:
www.susana.org/lang-en/library?view=ccbk...p;type=2&id=1230

With the permission of Juliet Waterkeyn, I am posting here a comment she made on the Sanitation Updates page on 9 September (posted by EvM):
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Via Dan Campbell (WASHPlus): An interesting comment from Julia Waterkeyn who left a comment on the post: Time to acknowledge the dirty truth behind community-led sanitation
sanitationupdates.wordpress.com/2011/06/...tation/#comment-6230

I recently challenged Kamal Kar, the originator of the approach, with this information at the Africa San conference in Kigali 2011. His response: “Dont you worry about that, its not our programme. This is done by the government…. ”

Whoever does it, is not the point… this methodology encourages abuse, and is unethical. CLTS may achieve its objectives of limiting open defecation but at what cost? Does the means justify the end? Just as medical doctors have to be responsible, where are the checks on unethical development practice?
There are alternatives: The Community Health Club approach achieves the same with positive rather than negative peer pressure. see the website www.africaahead.com for another way of doing things!
Juliet Waterkeyn

Juliet Waterkeyn
africaahead.com


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She added this on 16 Sept. after a comment by Peter Bury (IRC):
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HI Peter,
We cant compare today’s standards of practice with the way cholera was handled in London, over 100 years ago, as we now have a whole disicipline of community development , which should recognise certain ethics. For example, we wouldnt tolerate work houses for the poor as they did in Dickens time… it would not be acceptable today. We have to have respect communities and practice development in a professional way. Its amazing how much quiet chuntering is going on in Africa about the method of ‘naming and shaming’ in CLTS as it is against African culture to insult and belittle seniors in public.

However because CLTS seems to be the flavour of the month, many local practitioners are hesitant to speak out, but these cultural issues need airing. What is good for Asia is not necessarily appropriate in Africa. As Nyerere famously said, “In Africa we sit under a tree, til we agree!” Direct confrontation is considered barbaric. The achievements of ODF using CLTS method of coersion through shame, need to be compared in the light of what can be achieved with positive rather than the negative peer pressure that is used in ‘triggering’. For example in Northern Uganda in 2005, a CARE programme in IDP camps succeeded in constructing 11,800 latrines in 8 months, though a benign process through Community Health Clubs of empowering through knowledge, leading to informed decision making and concensus to build latrines. There was no agressive pointing of fingers, dividing community against themselves as people are shamed into behaving. There is already enough inter communal friction in sensitive communities such as those in IDP camps or post conflict.. and it is inappropriate to use CLTS which creates more agro. Lets hear from others on this point…

All the best, Juliet

To Juliet's comments, Kamal Kar responded on 13 Sept. by e-mail. With his kind permission, I am sharing it here for all to see. A very interesting debate, thank you very much to both of you for sharing your thoughts with us all. I think this is really very useful, and lots of food for thought (posted by EvM).

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Dear All,
I am sorry for the delay in responding to this communication. In fact I was in Mongolia and was traveling and couldn't read all my e-mails. I found this communication now.
I am surprised to see the communication bellow. I find there is a misunderstanding somewhere.
As far as I remember, at the end of my presentation at a technical session organised by SUSANA and the GIZ in the 3rd Africa San, I was asked to comment on the recent write up by Lise Chatterjee, a researcher at the University of Oxford. This was raised by one of the participants in the session.

While responding to the question, I referred to the long debate that followed after Chatterjee wrote an article about a bad practice of CLTS she saw somewhere in India. There were quite a bit of communications between her and the global practitioners of CLTS and others from IDS.

Later on we enquired about that and found that it was a case from the state of Karnataka in South India, where TSC (Total Sanitation Campaign) programme of GOI with subsidy is being implemented. As you all may know that CLTS without subsidy is not being institutionalized by most states in India excepting Maharashtra, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. A few other states have been implementing the approach at some scale. However, the gradual increase in the amount of hardware sanitation subsidy at the H/H level by GoI is also enhancing expectations for free handouts at the community level.

What I said was that it was not CLTS but TSC, which are entirely two different approaches. CLTS doesn't promote household level hard ware subsidy in sanitation. Neither it prescribes any toilet models or even ask communities to stop open defecation or construct latrines. It only facilitates a participatory analysis of the sanitation profile by the community themselves. As a result of the outcome the local communities decide to stop OD and move from there.

Let me make it very clear that abusing local communities is definitely not CLTS. You can never insult or abuse community while facilitating. Respecting local culture is an integral part of CLTS facilitation.

I never said that "it was not our programme." True CLTS is never an outsider's programme but community insider's. My apologies if I failed to convey the true spirit of CLTS in my answer in Kigali conference.

Please don't use CLTS at all in any of your programmes, unless you are more than 100% confident by its efficacy, applicability and sustainability. There are many sanitation approaches being implemented across the globe. Why everything has to be CLTS, Not at all. This is just an approach emerged from a poor country, which has spread spontaneously in many other countries. But I never said that this is the only approach.

I am copying this mail to some of the practitioners of CLTS in Africa, Asia and Latin America who might throw more light on this from there own experience. I am copying this to my colleagues in IDS who might help in sending you reference on good practice. My colleagues in Uganda may help in sharing their experience of CLTS in the country. This is copied to them as well.

I hope I could clarify this now. I would certainly recommend not to use the approach until you are sure and convinced. No approach can survive by abusing people and must vanish if that continues.

All the best,
Kamal Kar

Hi All
The first CLTS experience in South Africa has demonstrated to me that although the approach has adopted a "shaming" descriptor, it is rather more about assuming that pride and dignity are already part of a community identity, despite marginalisation by the elite (resources but also culture and lifestyle identity of the privileged. Despit dominant neglect of "the poor" (and those becoming poorer - beware complacency!)these are people with pride in their own resourceful "lifestyle", which I must say they are worthy of, given, in the case of South African former homelands, exploitation and abuse along with neglect.

Deborah Cousins
Comunity Water Supply & Sanitation Unit
South Africa

A remark about government adoption of CLTS in Asia: Pakistan has adopted proposed(?) something (mainly on paper I must say) called PATS (Pakistan's approach to total sanitation) which is similar to CLTS. However in my experience the included disapproval of hardware subsidies for latrines ("only where the use of latrines is already established, and damaged latrines need upgrade or repair" or some phrase like that) was quite detrimental to our efforts to supply good sanitation options in the aftermath of the recent floods.

A more general remark (and this reads between the lines of what Mr. Kar wrote):
Why is it that there are so many "fads" in development work that people think need to be implemented everywhere regardless of context and technical details. CLTS is for sure such an example, and Microcredits/insurance is another one that has turned bad recently due to overuse A couple of years ago it was the VIP latrine, which was probably nearly nowhere implemented correctly, but everyone called their latrines VIP...
I just hope that UDDTs and composting toilets don't turn into the next fad

In Pakistan, there may be some localized approach in sanitation, linking it roughly to CLTS. There is no formal CLTS initiative in Pakistan, officially launched by the government or by some major agency. If I can read Kamal's mind correctly, he is, probably, referring to a full-scale, formal CLTS initiative in Pakistan.

F H Mughal
Karachi, Pakistan

Dear all,
This is a discussion that I have been following in the hope of reading something that may enlighten me further. I know of the theory and philosophy behind CLTS and on paper it certainly does seem to be very empowering and simply serves to facilitate and help communities kick-start their own sanitation processes. I have no experience at all with CLTS in Asia, but am aware of CLTS as it has been “rolled-out” in some African countries, and of the contradictions between this up-scaled, roll-out of CLTS and the community insider’s programme it is often presented as being.

I am not questioning here the effectiveness of CLTS in an African context (although an early comparative study from WaterAid looking at Nigeria, Nepal and Bangladesh and anecdotal evidence from Benin do raise questions on how long-lasting the results after triggering really are). Instead I’d like to just point out the nature of this roll-out, which may itself undermine the chances for a large-scale, lasting impact in reducing OD in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Rather than being a “spontaneous spread”, I would suggest that the inclusion of CLTS in national sanitation strategies is not so much a result of the success of the approach on the ground but a combination of major donor pressure (UNICEF in particular are huge promoters of CLTS, and according to their web-site are supporting CLTS interventions in 29 of the 55 or so countries in Africa) and the extremely attractive - from a government and funders perspective - “no subsidy” approach.

The sanitation sector is notoriously underfunded in Sub-Saharan Africa and most governments are at a loss as to how to deal with it, so if a major donor or group of donors do make money available to improve national strategies etc. then these donors do have an inordinately large influence on the content of that strategy. If a major donor is promoting CLTS across the continent, then this is what they want to see in the national strategies. And this is what we do see. The budgets required are generally to cover the whole “facilitating” process, and not the infrastructure itself, which from a government perspective is a nice little get out clause - “we only help the people realise what’s going on - what happens next is up to them”.

The upshot of all this is that we have centrally trained facilitators, spreading an approach from the centre out (or top down if you want to look at it like that) trying to instigate what Kamal Kar says should be a community insider’s programme. In my opinion this could become very messy and it is a very, very fine line indeed between an empowering community led analysis of the walk of shame in a village and a humiliating one led from the outside as part of the national strategy. Added to this, is the time pressure government departments and services will have (due to funders budget lines) and the elegant, patient open ended facilitation that may be needed just will not happen. Results will have to be achieved come what may.

This is further complicated by the “no technology promotion” mantra - which in itself may seem sensible, but in the absence of local technical competence simply leaves communities hanging in the unknown - or rather, shitting into a hole. How many holes will be filled with shit before communities and households have access to appropriate support and sanitation choices?

All that simply on the initial “roll-out” of CLTS. Now as we know, CLTS is only a means to an end, and that end is stopping OD and getting households on to any rung of the sanitation ladder - the question of “what next?” is still a huge unknown.

So in conclusion I’d just like to summarise by saying that in my experience, contrary to its very philosophy of being a community based programme, CLTS in Africa is often donor driven through central government, on a relatively tight time schedule, offering no technological support to poor households other than dig a hole. It’s a short term solution that is better than OD, I’m sure, but how long can the implementation of the approach in this form be expected to last?

All the best,
Patrick

Patrick Bracken
Water and Sanitation Expert
AHT GROUP AG
Management & Engineering
D-45128 Essen, Huyssenallee 66-68
Germany
Phone +49 201 2016-238
Fax +49 201 2016-226

Web www.aht-group.com
Managing Director: Dr. Hubertus Schneider
Chairman of Supervisory Board: Gerardus van Wissen
Corporate Seat: Essen
County Court: Essen HR B 14397

Dear all,

The last newsletter from CLTS Foundation brings the findings of the regional review of CLTS in the East Asia and Pacific region carried out by Andy Robinson on behalf of UNICEF, WaterAid Australia, Plan and WSP-EAP. Here is the link for the presentation:

http://www.communityledtotalsanitation.org/sites/communityledtotalsanitation.org/files/Regional_CLTS_review_Andy_Robinson.pdf

Hope it will bring some more inputs for the discussion.

Best regards,
Cecília.

Hi Cecilia - the link doesn't seem to be working

Hi Cecilia,

Yes, (as Mr. Brachken has pointed out), the link does not seem to work. It says some "Error 404: Sorry, the page you are trying to view cannot be found." Can you please check?

Thanks,

Ananya

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Note by moderator (EvM): I have already e-mailed Petra Bongartz about this and she is onto it. She wrote back: Hi Elisabeth, I will check it out and fix it. And can also suggest another relevant resource on the Forum.

Best wishes,

Petra

Dear all, I will send the fixed link in due course - I just saw that the problem is that it must have got lost in the transition from the old to the new website at the end of last year. So will now locate the review and repost it. Please bear with me. I also wanted to point to Kamal's paper 'Digging in...' but see he already mentioned it above.

As for some of the other comments above, I have invited CLTS practitioners from NGOs and governments to respond.

Best wishes, and apologies for the broken link.
Petra

The final copy editing for publication of the regional review of CLTS in East Asia & the Pacific is underway, and we hope that the review will be released by UNICEF in the next week or so ... until then, it will be unavailable (the previous version on the CLTS website was a draft version for peer review)!