A review of the UNICEF roll-out of the CLTS approach in West and Central Africa

The Community Led Total Sanitation approach has been introduced by UNICEF in 19 of the 24 countries of both Francophone and Anglophone West and Central Africa since 2008. This paper marks the gradual end of the pilots and the start of a more developmental and scaling up phase. The review assesses the progress of CLTS in the region and considers improvements for scaling up. CLTS has been found to be largely well accepted, and over 2,000 communities had become open defecation free (ODF) by the end of 2010, meaning that close to a million people in the region are benefitting from ODF environments and associated health benefits after just 2 years. If the gains continue to progress at the same rate, CLTS has the potential to bring many of the region’s countries on target for the sanitation goals of 2015 (MDG 7). Recommendations and challenges that have emerged are discussed with the intention of promoting the lessons learnt from the pilot phase and scaling up in an equitable and sustainable manner

Software Tools for Indigenous Knowledge Management

Indigenous communities are beginning to realize the potential benefits which digital technologies can offer with regard to the documentation and preservation of their histories and cultures. However they are also coming to understand the opportunities for misuse and misappropriation of their knowledge which may accompany digitization. In this paper we describe a set of open source software tools which have been designed to enable indigenous communities to protect unique cultural knowledge and materials which have been preserved through digitization. The software tools described here enable authorized members of communities to: define and control the rights, accessibility and reuse of their digital resources; uphold traditional laws pertaining to secret/sacred knowledge or objects; prevent the misuse of indigenous heritage in culturally inappropriate or insensitive ways; ensure proper attribution to the traditional owners; and enable indigenous communities to describe their resources in their own words. Hopefully the deployment of such tools will contribute to the self-determination and empowerment of indigenous communities through the revitalization of their cultures and knowledge which have been eroded by colonization, western laws, western cultures and globalization

Urban partnership approaches: a WSUP update

The challenge of providing basic services to the urban poor is enormous, and past sectoral approaches have had limited impact on the coverage statistics. WSUP – water & sanitation for the urban poor – is a unique partnership organisation that aims to support and strengthen local service providers to meet this challenge at scale, and in a sustainable way. This paper provides an overview of the WSUP model, and presents some achievements to date. Local Service providers are being supported in a number of innovative ways to build organisational capacity and improve planning and pro-poor implementation policies. An interesting aspect of the partnership approach is the distinctive governance arrangements that have evolved, with a Steering Committee set up in each city where WSUP is working. These committees have formed differently in each location, reflecting the prevailing operational practicalities. A few specific challenges and lessons are presented

Using the Semantic Grid to Build Bridges between Museums and Indigenous Communities

In this paper we describe a Semantic Grid application designed to enable museums and indigenous communities in distributed locations, to collaboratively discuss, describe, annotate and define the rights associated with objects in museums that originally belonged to or are of cultural or historical significance to indigenous groups. By extending and refining an existing application, Vannotea, we enable users on access grid nodes to collaboratively attach descriptive, rights and tribal care metadata and annotations to digital images, video or 3D representations. The aim is to deploy the software within museums to enable the traditional owners to describe and contextualize museum content in their own words and from their own perspectives. This sharing and exchange of knowledge will hopefully revitalize cultures eroded through colonization and globalization and repair and strengthen relationships between museums and indigenous communities

Improving Monitoring and Water Point Functionality in Rural Ethiopia

This study examines the patterns, trends, and factors associated with functional community water points in rural Ethiopia and identifies potential areas of improvement in terms of practitioner response to functionality and functionality monitoring. It was part of an integrated WaSH and nutrition program implemented by UNICEF Ethiopia and the Government of Ethiopia. Cross-sectional surveys were conducted to collect WaSH-related data in communities and WaSH committees from four community-based nutrition (CBN) program groupings in Ethiopia. In all areas, CBN was implemented, but only in less than half of the areas, a WaSH intervention was implemented. Seventy-three representative kebeles, comprising 30 intervention and 43 control communities, were surveyed. Two structured surveys were conducted. The ‘community survey’ addressed community water points and their functionality and the main areas for improvement needed. The ‘WaSH committee survey’ investigated technical and management aspects of water points and their functionality. Data were analyzed using bivariate regression to identify community characteristics and management practices associated with functionality of water points and explore opportunities to improve water point functionality and monitoring. In the communities, 65% of water points were functional. Eighty percent of communities had a WaSH committee. The WaSH committee members reported that the most used water point types were protected dug wells and boreholes, and that 80% of their water points were functional. India Mark II pumps were more likely to be functional and communities with longer established WaSH committees had higher water point functionality. Communities suggested that the key factors for water point sustainability were improving water quality and water pressure, reducing water collection time, and speeding up repair times. Taking community leaders’ ‘priority lists’ into consideration offers sustainable opportunities for demand-driven, adaptive and targeted design and implementation of rural water supply programs, which, if they include the grassroots level as key informants and actors of change, can succeed. Interventions should integrate the ‘voice’ of the community, the WaSH committees, and other stakeholders and thereby facilitate transdisciplinary approaches at different stages of program management (planning, monitoring, and evaluation). This would help closing the knowledge to action gap and improve policy, programming, practice, and service delivery

Early protein intake predicts functional connectivity and neurocognition in preterm born children

© 2021, The Author(s). Nutritional intake can promote early neonatal brain development in very preterm born neonates (\u3c 32 weeks’ gestation). In a group of 7-year-old very preterm born children followed since birth, we examined whether early nutrient intake in the first weeks of life would be associated with long-term brain function and neurocognitive skills at school age. Children underwent resting-state functional MRI (fMRI), intelligence testing (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, 5th Ed) and visual-motor processing (Beery-Buktenica, 5th Ed) at 7 years. Relationships were assessed between neonatal macronutrient intakes, functional connectivity strength between thalamic and default mode networks (DMN), and neuro-cognitive function using multivariable regression. Greater functional connectivity strength between thalamic networks and DMN was associated with greater intake of protein in the first week (β = 0.17; 95% CI 0.11, 0.23, p \u3c 0.001) but lower intakes of fat (β = − 0.06; 95% CI − 0.09, − 0.02, p = 0.001) and carbohydrates (β = − 0.03; 95% CI − 0.04, − 0.01, p = 0.003). Connectivity strength was also associated with protein intake during the first month (β = 0.22; 95% CI 0.06, 0.37, p = 0.006). Importantly, greater thalamic-DMN connectivity strength was associated with higher processing speed indices (β = 26.9; 95% CI 4.21, 49.49, p = 0.02) and visual processing scores (β = 9.03; 95% CI 2.27, 15.79, p = 0.009). Optimizing early protein intake may contribute to promoting long-term brain health in preterm-born children