Disruptive design in sanitation marketing: lessons from product and process innovations in Bangladesh

Based in Dhaka, the Sanitation Marketing (SanMark) team at iDE – Bangladesh, is harnessing principles of disruptive innovation to change the landscape of how latrines are produced and sold to rural households. iDE’s Bangladesh SanMark Pilot (BSMP) project (2012-2014) aimed to develop a proof of concept around private-sector led delivery of customer-oriented improved sanitation technologies through three phases: i) identification of existing disruptee conditions, ii) support of an “entry point” innovation that generated key “disruptive design principles”, and iii) robust ideation and prototyping of a disruptor system grounded in the design principles. Through these phases, the project experienced an initial “entry point innovation” through the plastic SaTo® Pan. The resulting design principles then informed development of the disruptor system of the plastic “Sanitation in a Box” (SanBox) offset plastic latrine, a promising sanitation product grounded in a scalable business model connecting grassroots latrine producers to a national supply chain

Integrating WASH and nutrition in market-based interventions: principles and results from the field

This paper outlines principles for integrating market-based approaches for improving WASH and nutrition. It draws on iDE’s experience implementing such programs, and specifically highlights learnings from iDE Bangladesh’s program Profitable Opportunities for Food Security (PROOFS), implemented in partnership with ICCO Cooperation, BoP Inc., and Edukans. PROOFS leverages market forces to increase food security, nutrition, and water and sanitation for smallholder farmers and base-ofpyramid consumers. The program recently concluded a pilot in which Nutrition Sales Agents added a set of WASH products to their existing “basket” of nutrition-related goods. The paper highlights principles for leveraging markets to achieve outcomes in WASH and nutrition. Specific insights involve aligning sales cycles, managing different sales and distribution channels, and ensuring that product margins provide profit opportunity for businesses and sales agents. These principles are underscored by observations from the WASH-Nutrition pilot, the final results of which will be available for the WEDC Conference

Gender equality approaches in water, sanitation, and hygiene programs: Towards gender-transformative practice

The recent (re-)emergence of gender-transformative approaches in the development sector has focused on transforming the gender norms, dynamics, and structures which perpetuate inequalities. Yet, the application of gender-transformative approaches within water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) programing remains nascent as compared with other sectors. Adopting a feminist sensemaking approach drawing on literature and practice, this inquiry sought to document and critically reflect on the conceptualization and innovation of gender-transformative thinking in the Australian Government's Water for Women Fund. Through three sensemaking workshops and associated analysis, participants developed a conceptual framework and set of illustrative case examples to support WASH practitioners to integrate strengthened gender-transformative practice. The multi-layered framework contains varied entry points to support multi-disciplinary WASH teams integrating gender equality, as skills and resources permit. Initiatives can be categorized as insensitive, sensitive, responsive or transformative, and prompted by five common motivators (welfare, efficiency, equity, empowerment, and transformative requality). The framework has at its foundation two diverging tendencies: toward instrumental gender potential and toward transformative gender potential. The article draws on historical and recent WASH literature to illustrate the conceptual framework in relation to: (i) community mobilization, (ii) governance, service provision, and oversight, and (iii) enterprise development. The illustrative examples provide practical guidance for WASH practitioners integrating gendered thinking into programs, projects, and policies. We offer a working definition for gender-transformative WASH and reflect on how the acknowledgment, consideration, and transformation of gender inequalities can lead to simultaneously strengthened WASH outcomes and improved gender equality