Once upon a time in Mexico, I walked along ancient ruins, and I met an older man from England. He told me he had visited almost every country in the world. I asked him, as so many people ask me now, what was the favorite country that he had visited?! He did not hesitate. No, “Oh I love them all for so many different reasons.” He told me simply, “Madagascar. It is so different, and it is so…
In July our Urban Sanitation and Hygiene Specialist, Beth Lomas, presented a research paper at the Water, Engineering and Development Centre Conference in Kumasi, Ghana, sharing insights from SEED's application of the Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) approach to halting open defecation. This approach includes using shocking and taboo imagery to appeal to long-term behaviour change. Read on to hear Beth’s take on her exciting week in Kumasi!
Landing late in the evening, the hot and humid air of Accra was buzzing with activity, an enticing welcome to my week long trip to Ghana. Once I’d made my way to the guest house, I found many fellow conference delegates who I’d be spending the next few days with. As we tucked into our first Ghanaian meal, we found ourselves deep in conversation about the potential of utilising worms for composting human poo - a sign of the things to come!
To some this might sound like a slightly strange dinner conversation, but this group had come together from all over the world precisely because of our passion for all things water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH), and composting poo is just one of many solutions to the global sanitation crisis. And on this first night in Ghana, it was great to meet some of the people I would be learning so many insights from throughout the week.
The conference would be an exciting platform for over 500 delegates to listen and share their research findings; sharing knowledge and lessons learned from projects around the world. To enable me to present research from SEED’s urban sanitation project in Madagascar, I was fortunate to secure funding from the CLTS Knowledge Hub at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex. The CLTS Knowledge Hub aims to bring together practitioners working on community sanitation projects to help share knowledge and insights from the field.
The next day we travelled through the lush green landscape towards Kumasi, a five hour drive, where the driver tried to distract us with amusingly dramatic Ghanaian soap operas. Once we arrived at our bustling destination and made ourselves familiar with the town, we made plans for the coming week and continued our discussions on recent global sanitation research.
Our week kicked off with an all day workshop on CLTS, which stands for Community-Led Total Sanitation, a methodology which encourages communities to take action to improve their own sanitation situation and move away from defecating in the open, which unfortunately remains the only option for over a billion people worldwide. My role was to help facilitate discussion among participants and ensure that all the important insights and research were documented.
The following day was the official opening ceremony of the conference. We were greeted by traditional Ghanaian drummers and a poet who had written a special piece to wish us well with the proceedings. Keynote speakers followed, explaining the importance of the conference theme, ‘Ensuring Availability and Sustainable Management of Water and Sanitation for All’, identifying some of the current challenges and the many of the ongoing achievements in this area. The theme drew on the global call for improved sanitation from the recently announced Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs follow the Millennium Development Goals, acknowledging the successes and shortcomings of the MDGs, and over the next fifteen years will aim to significantly reduce extreme poverty and many of its dimensions. The SDGs focus on the universal access to services and reduction of poverty, aiming to leave no one behind. For the WASH sector, this means universal access to improved sanitation and water sources by 2030 and reducing the avoidable diseases spread by the lack of adequate toilets and clean water.
Filled with inspiration of the integral importance of universal access to clean water and sanitation from the opening speeches, we started the conference presentations. Over three days, practitioners and researchers shared their important work and received questions from the audience. When the time came for me to speak about SEED’s Project Malio, discussing our experience of using controversial images to ignite behaviour change, I was encouraged by how engaged the audience was. Earlier this year Project Malio had begun to pilot these images, and the reactions of the community members and opinion leaders, as well as staff within the organisation itself, were extremely varied. These reactions subsequently became the topic of some extensive research by the Malio team, focusing on the impact of social norms on behaviour change and the effect of pushing traditionally taboo boundaries. Many other conference participants had similar in-field experiences working in behaviour change communication and were really interested in listening, sharing and debating this interesting topic. Even after the presentation further lively discussion continued, and I had the chance to exchange details with staff working on similar projects, who were interested to maintain an information sharing network, and keen to keep up with SEED’s progress and the achievements of the Project Malio more generally.
Following many incredibly interesting and ground-breaking research presentations, the last two days were concerned with practical workshops run by large international NGOs. The topics were varied and the sessions highly interactive, focusing on building capacity of participants in different skills. It was a further opportunity to access many important skills and practical lessons learned from around the world and take knowledge back to the team in Madagascar, where we are always looking to improve and adapt our project working. I attended a UNICEF session on creating inclusive WASH programming, looking at menstrual hygiene management and gender, as well as an outcome mapping planning workshop by Participatory Development Associates. I also was able to attend a field trip to a waste treatment site to look at how Kumasi is trying to tackle faecal sludge management, supported by an organisation called Water Sanitation for the Urban Poor.
As the drummers played out their final beats at the closing ceremony, we reflected on all the important discussions and research learnings we had gained from the week. Ghana had welcomed us with open arms, but also provided a practical illustration of the importance universal access to improved WASH. While a magnificent host, Ghana still has 5 million people who use an unsafe water source and 4000 children die every year from diarrhoea, often caused by lack of adequate toilets. The location of the conference carried an important reminder that despite global progress, there is still a long way to go to meet the Sustainable Development Goal of universal WASH access for all.
If you’d like to take a look at the paper Beth presented, check out the CLTS Knowledge Hub!
Happy World health Day 2014! This year, the World Health Organisation has decided to focus on the prevention of vector-borne diseases. These diseases- such as malaria, dengue and yellow fever- are carried and transmitted by flies, mosquitos and ticks. According to the World Health Organisation there has been a resurgence of these types of diseases in recent years. Malaria has been diagnosed in Greece for the first time in 40 years. Dengue fever is now present in over 100 countries- putting 40% of the world’s population at risk- more than 2.5 billion people.
There is no simple answer to why these diseases are so prevalent and so dangerous. Numerous factors can be said to cause them. Inadequate housing, overcrowding, malnourishment, poor hygiene and poor sanitation all contribute to their spread; all phrases that can be used to describe parts of Madagascar.
Less than 11% of Madagascan’s have access to improved sanitation facilities. Open defecation is widespread, contaminating food and water sources. With severely limited access to health and education facilities, easily preventable diseases are rife and many are perpetuated by this cycle of open defecation, surface water pollution, poor hygiene practices and diarrhoeal illnesses linked to inadequate water and sanitation provision. In addition to having devastating health consequences, these diseases also impede economic development, causing the loss of some 5 million working days and 3 million school days every year in Madagascar (World Bank, 2011).
Project Soaiegna is being implemented in two of the poorest fokotany in Fort Dauphin – Ambinanikely and Tanambao- where most households do not have access to latrines, meaning alleyways; beaches and the marketplace are all used for defecation instead. The project, set up in September 2012 and concluding in September this year, is aiming to increase the awareness of those living in these fokotanys of the dangers that accompany open defecation and to increase their access to latrines. The project will have a direct impact on 8,000 people and, an indirect effect on the entire 70,000 people that live in Fort Dauphin.
What makes this project unique is that it is the first of its kind to combine Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) with subsidised infrastructure in Fort Dauphin. What this means is that whilst Azafady and provides the materials and expertise that allow the latrines to be built, the direction and the focus of the all-important hygiene education lessons is led and directed by the community and their participation. This approach builds on the knowledge that giving a community a toilet is simply not enough to eradicate open defecation but that infrastructure must be accompanied by a strong educational programme that changes people’s attitudes and behaviour.
In the first six months of the second year of this project, we have focused our attention on the fokotany of Tanambao, and we have had a great response. At the outset of the year, in conjuncture with the chef fokontany (community leader) we highlighted 235 households especially in need of sanitation assistance. The first step we took was to engage and to motivate the community, making sure that we reached these highlighted households when integrating with the community. Out of the 235 households we identified as especially in need, 79% of these households were represented at our action planning meetings.
These meetings were used to stimulate discussion about sanitation issues and to ‘trigger’ people into taking action. These meetings demonstrated that many in the community were aware that latrines were essential to preventing illness but that they were not being used as they were too expensive for people to build themselves. At this point, our Community Liaison Officers (CLOs) introduced our subsidised infrastructure initiative- that for 5,000 Airy (£1.50) and a commitment that would provide extensive labour, Azafady would provide the expertise and materials needed to build a household latrine. At the end of this stage of the project 174 households from the fokotany registered their interest in building a latrine.
To date, 40 of these households now have latrines and another 69 are on schedule to be completed by the middle of this month.
The first year of this project taught us that literacy levels in these communities was and is very low, and that written educational tools simply would not be sufficient to provide the education needed to change behaviour. Instead, representatives from all 109 beneficiary households were invited to participate in a series of four focus groups (talking about faecal-oral transmission routes, the importance of hand washing, the pros and cons of using a latrine, and how to clean and maintain a latrine), discussing common challenges to latrine use and hygiene behaviour change. Feedback from the focus groups has been extremely positive and 93% of beneficiary households have attended all four sessions held to date.
We are extremely hopeful that by September 2014 we will have quantifiable data to prove what we already know to be true; that significant steps have been achieved in the fight against vector-borne diseases and open defecation in these two fokotany. The learning gained through these two pilot years will be instrumental to the effective implementation of Project Malio which will expand our unique approach across the Urban Commune of Fort Dauphin over the next three years and for which funding has now been fully secured.
If you would like to know more about our work in Madagascar, project Soaiegna or project Malio, please email us at info@azafady. Happy World Health Day!
The pilot year of project Oratsimba is just coming to its conclusion (June 2013- March 2014) and we are keen to share with you what this project has achieved in the past twelve months.
The project is focused around the village of Ste Luce. Ste Luce is found in the Anosy region of South East Madagascar. It is populated by the Antanosy people, some of the poorest people in the entirety of Madagascar. Illiteracy in the area is as high as 73% (INSTAT, 2010) and 45% of children are working instead of in education (INSTAT, 2010). The 2,407 villagers support themselves by using the dwindling resources they can gather from the sea and what is left of the surrounding forests.
Nearly 50% of Madagascar’s annual spiny lobster catch is landed on the 150 km stretch of coastline between Sandravinany and Fort Dauphin each year and Ste Luce is the single most important lobster fishing village in the region (Sabatini et al., 2007). It is estimated that each of the 600+ fishermen in the area catch up to 18 tonnes of spiny lobster each year. This is a massive amount of lobster and, In short, at the moment the lobster fishing industry in the area is unsustainable. If the industry was to disappear, as it is in danger of doing, it would be a major catastrophe for the local population.
Project Oratsimba is designed to make sure that this does not happen. The aim of the project is to promote and support sustainable local management of lobster fishing in Ste Luce and to avert further degradation of the lobster population through the implementation of locally managed
The project has had some major successes in its first year.
In conjuncture with the local community, we have helped establish a new Dina (set of laws) to govern how the fishermen can fish in the area. The Steering committee brought together local stakeholders in the industry to discuss what they thought needed to be done to make the industry more sustainable. The result of this was a new 45 point document that brought the local area into line with national standards. These new rules, once ratified by the local mayor, will help monitor the size and number of lobster caught and how they are caught which will make the industry more sustainable.
Using buoys made by Azafady volunteers, we have marked out the local fishing area. This area was based on local consultation and research, and fishing in the area will fall under the rules of the newly established Dina. By limiting where fishing can take place, as well as when and how, the local lobster population will be allowed to have time to replenish itself.
A major success has been the Riaky committee. This committee is made up of fifteen local fishermen, five from each of the three hamlets that make up Ste Luce. This committee has been established to act as ambassadors for the project and, more importantly, to police the area to ensure that the locals follow then new rules and that no outsiders fish in the Ste Luce area. By giving the local people agency in their own change, Azafady hopes to build their own ability to monitor the trade to a level where we are no longer needed.
Like every project, we have had some teething problems in the past year. The baseline research for this project was contracted out to a project partner of ours, the Unité de Recherche Langoustière. Due to a lack of funding they were unable to provide us with significant data about the lobster population in the area. Sadly, we did not have the capacity to do this research ourselves, and this meant that we did not manage to secure a satisfactory scientific baseline survey. Going forward, this means that we will not be able to accurately measure the impact of our project on the local marine wildlife- a disappointment for us.
Overall, we are extremely happy with how project Oratsimba has gone in the past year and we are keen to build on our successes. We are currently seeking further funding to be able to extend and improve the project.
For more details about this project or any of Azafady’s projects, email [email protected].
Azafady is proud to announce that project Miaro has been nominated by High Sierra in an amazing annual competition and is now in the running for 25 k sponsorship from the European Outdoor Conservation Association (EOCA)! And we need your help to secure this funding!
EOCA have left the decision of which project is going to get funded entirely in the public’s hand! For the next two weeks they are running a poll and the organisation with the most votes at the end will win the grant. This unique competition is being run in conjunction with National Geographic.
Project Mairo supports local people to provide alternative sources of timber, replant endangered palm species, and maintain firebreaks. Additionally, through the project ecotourism infrastructure will be developed through the establishment of a trained guiding association and local representation improved through regional platforms. In total, the project involves the planting of 19,000 trees to reduce community dependency on forest fragments which play a crucial role in providing refuges for biodiversity. http://www.madagascar.co.uk/projects/miaro.htm.
You can vote for us at this address: http://www.outdoorconservation.eu/project-voting-category.cfm?catid=3. It’ll take one second and will have a massive impact!
Please, please, please share this with your friends and family and help us to make a difference!
