Dear All,
A Very Happy And Good Day To All Of You

Very interesting discussion highly appreciated; my point is community leader are one of the best option along with the appointed leader at the same time. As in first reply the corruption culture was taken into consideration which is very true. The appointed leader will also play a role of monitoring for Natural Community Leader. For selecting this option we also need to educate the Natural Leader on WASH importance and its effects on behavior change and than ultimate outcome.

I strongly believe that hardcore provision in WASH is highly important but SOFT-CORE is more important. Putting emphasis on soft-core would develop or create the demand of hardcore and once the hardcore (latrine, hand pump etc) is provided to them they will take care of it better because sustainability of the hardcore is major issue.

I have witnessed that less stress is given on the soft-core which has not changed the behavior but for the time being. furthermore children are the driving force of the change in this. if we can educate children on this in a way that they find it interesting this will later change it in habit and this habit will become their nature. Also mothers they are the most important entity in any intervention we do educate gender but we need to target mothers especially in this case to create big impact and behavior change.

Things we need to do.

1. lectures or training's to community leaders.

2. Fun loving attitude with children to adopt the practice (hand washing, using of soap etc)

3. Educating Mothers or young mothers.

4. Continuous education of soft-core regardless of the provision of hardcore.

5. Community level seminars etc.


Best regards,


Syed Mohammad Uzair Shah

Chief Executive
STARO

Hello,

@ Furqan : What are LIGS and LIGS(UP) ?
Somebody else mentionned CTLS vs SLTS. What is SLTS?

I agree with Rajan that the goal is to identify the "right" person(s) or the "right" organisation(s).
In my experience a project is introduced to all the stakeholders but you cannot predict which leaders will really show enthusiasm and will be able to give momentum to the project . Sometimes you find the mayor of the project will support the cause greatly and sometimes not, same for religious leader or youth association.
In one project I worked in we found that the youth association was not interesting in water, sanitation and waste but an association of young activists played a great role in delivering messages in the communities through PHAST training workshops and Wash in school. Their enthusiasm played a significant role in changing people's attitudes. In the same project, one of our staff member, championned the cause, got elected after the end of the project and a couple of years later the village got a prize for the cleanest village !
I am aware that we always want to implement the project on a large scale but the same recipe does not work for all villages. I believe that identifying the leaders which will be able to encourage people to change attitude requires time and a good familiarity with the setting and subtle balance in each village or city district or slum.

Hi all, this is a very interesting and important discussion, as we believe that successfully engaging local authorities is the key to a sustainable impact of any program. In Cambodia, WaterSHED works with local commune councilors (elected through popular vote) to increase sanitation coverage in rural areas. Implementing a market-based approach, WaterSHED helps local business to improve their sanitation products and services, engages and facilitates local leaders to stimulate demand, and connects supply and demand side. We found that recognition is a very strong driver to motivate these local leaders. More than 20% of the commune councilors we work with have identified “recognition” as their top value (followed by knowledge, responsibility, and honesty). Equally, in qualitative interviews we found shaming/recognition by their supervisors for poor/good results in sanitation to be a strong driver of their engagement.

Thus, WaterSHED has set up a leadership development program geared to foster leadership capacity at local level. Over a course of nine months, commune councilors meet every three months to discover new leadership skills (having a vision, setting goals, making plans, teamwork, communication skills, emotional intelligence, overcoming fear, etc.). The participants are then set a “leadership challenge”, which consists of increasing sanitation coverage in their constituency (usually 2,000 – 4,000 households, baseline sanitation coverage 25-35%), to put their leadership skills into practice. After three months, results are reviewed, presented and discussed at the beginning of the next conference and the strongest leader (identified through a voting system) is recognized for the achievement with a medal, certificate, trophy, and confetti canon. The commune councilors pay into this program ($45 participation fee).

An overview and evaluation of the pilot project can be found on our website. Here and there is some video footage of the program.
We have made great experience unlocking latent leadership behavior with this program. Two of the communes that participated in the pilot project are now (28 months later) almost ODF and recognition for the work (originally provided by the project) now comes from the community itself.

Janita
WaterSHED Cambodia

Dear all,

This is a very good Forum to learn to share experience.

We have some experience on Working with Community Leaders on WASH Program implementation in Bangladesh which I attached herewith to share with you.

Thanks

Furqan

Dear all,

We have some experience on Working with the Community leaders for WASH program implementation and have history of sanitation situation improvement in Bangladesh which I tried to share with you in attached file.

Thanks

Furqan

Hi, for a behavioural change strategy to take effect, it should be well targeted to the beneficiaries. Whether rural communities or urban poor communities, there is an element of "Poor" involved in both settings. The behavioural attitude of the poor is that they hardly show interest or participate in sanitation programs. One strategy can be directed at Breaking the barriers between the Poor and the Market. This can be achieved by organising events and activities such as "Toilet Fair" through which they would be sensitized on the types of toilet available and be guided to make a choice on the that befits their locality. The dangers and harm of open defecation can also be preached. The events and activities should be taken to their doorsteps with the CBOs and other community leaders and members serving as actors or being part of the outreach team.
Thank you.
Kofi Nsenkyire
Wwfc Ghana representative

Plan USA and UNC Water Institute have been collaborating on a 4 year, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation grant (*) that examines the role and relative effectiveness of 'local actors' in facilitating CLTS, driving latrine coverage and achieving ODF status. Local actors in this instance were natural leaders (the focus of our Ghana pilot); teachers (the focus of our Ethiopia study) and district level managers in government (the focus of our Kenya pilot). We also examined the role of local actors and CLTS in rapid evaluations of CLTS programs in 7 additional countries (Haiti, Uganda, Niger, Cambodia, Indonesia, Nepal and Timor Leste).

Using RCTs (Ghana) and quasi-experimental research design (Ethiopia) we were able to measure the effect of local actors as compared to NGO-staff led CLTS interventions. In Ghana alone, we found an average of 20% point improvement in CLTS outcomes using natural leaders (when compared to NGO staff) and in Ethiopia a roughly 13% improvement (although, interestingly, in our study, HEWs were still seen as driving better outcomes).

A suite of outputs including policy and practice high level summaries, case study reports from the 7 countries outlined above and videos highlighting this work are available at the following site: waterinstitute.unc.edu/clts/

Darren Saywell
Senior Director - Water, Sanitation and Health
Plan International USA

(*) Added by moderator: See a discussion of this grant here on the forum:
forum.susana.org/forum/categories/5-comm...hiopia-and-ghana#682

Dear all,
When discuss "community leaders/CL" we need to put clearly definition for "CL". Is "Religion Leader/RL" also part of CL, particularly RL at village level?
In fact, through their strategic role and function, the RL can eager and facilitate community to practice "clean and health WASH behaviour". However, in many cases, WASH program initiator, particularly from Government side, not involve the RL properly.
So if answer is YES, to emphasize role of CL/RL, it is needed :
1. Strengthen their knowledge regarding on WASH issues
2. Train communication and advocacy
3. Enhance their ability to handle techical (simple techical) aspect in WASH area, like: to built handwash facility, simple latrine, water purifier, etc
4. Strengthen their capacity to open access to policy maker

Thanks,
DormanNapitu
Wahana Indonesia Membangun (WinDevelopment)

First of all I would like to express through the experience working very closely with the community in different part of the country that, there is a need of leader to take the motivation always lit.
We need to identify the right person for that and investing in their capacity building to further understand the issue and scope to work on. However I strongly believe that even though there is a need of specific focus towards the issue like WASH but it has to be an integrated approach.
The sustainability part becomes sustained if we have such locally motivated leaders to take the issue, at the same time there is a need to educate the all irrespective.
Finance is one of the challenges which government needs to address in fair and just way, which is the main concern of the people.

The above are the few observations at this point of time would like to keep in front of the platform.

Dear all
I am agree that the community leaders to change Wash behaviors are very important in rural areas and urban as well and also good point about there time frame. I want to add the capacity building of the leaders and differentiate the role of the different type of community leaders in different places.
How they are leading the community people, like social aspects, cultural aspects, and others. and the urban level leaders have some different leading role mainly in the semi urban areas where the un-managed migration is one of the issues. So capacity building of the community leaders for the sustainable changes in WASH behaviors is very important part with their leading areas.
Second thing is , we should go with both CLTS and SLTS approach in rural area of developing countries...
Third thing is, quality of external facilitation with internal participation in the community with their own approaches of livelihood. behavioral changes is the directly related to the community living approaches, their livelihood sources, norms and value and other aspects.
to be continue the discussion.......
Indra Raj Badu
Social and Institutional Development Specialist
RVWRMP, Nepal

Hi there,

When I hear the term "natural leaders" I think automatically of CLTS, but I gather this thematic discussion is broader than CLTS alone and trying to utilise the "natural leaders" concept also to other behavior change approaches. That sounds good.

However one question I have: are we talking mostly about rural settings here rather than urban settings? I have the suspicion that "community leaders" are more common (and better established) in rural communities than for urban slums. I could imagine (but I have no data on that) that for urban slums, many people live "completely on their own", without the support structure of a "community" or "community leaders". If anything, there could even be bad-apple community leaders, i.e. those that operate with criminal intentions or taking advantage of others, e.g. charging huge rents for tiny dwellings, not allowing water kiosks to be built and rather sell water to people at a premium and things like that.

Therefore, what are your thoughts on rural versus urban in this context?

Raymond (login name VERS), you mentioned "opinion leaders" in your post above mine - is that the same or different to community leaders? I would say it is slightly different.

Regards,
Elisabeth

Its very important for opinion leaders in every community to organize educational workshop on the importance of washing to change behaviors of its members so that they understand wash behaviors, the benefit and its achievement during and after wash.And teachers should add wash behaviors in their school programs, school children should be used as the ambassadors of wash behaviors in communities, parents should also help their children to carry out this noble project for us to archived the Universal goal.