Identifying and supporting vulnerable people in community-led total sanitation: a Bangladesh case study

Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) has been hailed as a revolutionary process for improving sanitation in low income countries, particularly in Bangladesh where it has had significant impact. Several recent studies, however, have raised concerns that the poorest and most marginalised members of the community are often neglected and/or unable to participate, and in some cases are disadvantaged by CLTS programmes. This paper describes a study that sought to explore the experiences of vulnerable people in three CLTS communities in Bangladesh. Amongst other findings, the study indicates that well-being ranking using community identified criterion should be practised when identifying a CLTS community’s vulnerable members, vulnerable people strongly believe in the power of CLTS to improve their livelihoods and in the importance of their participation in CLTS activities, vulnerable people are motivated to move up the sanitation ladder and most households have made improvements to their latrine, and the installation of toilet seats on latrines to aid disabled people has in some cases decreased the sanitation independence of other household members

Sanitation marketing in Kenema, Sierra Leone: challenges to scale-up and opportunities for success

A GOAL Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) project that began in 2008 recorded great success but later an ODF slippage rate close to 30% was witnessed. Subsequent assessments have found this to be caused by dissatisfaction with the quality of latrines built and a lack of access to markets for improved sanitation hardware. As a result GOAL initiated a sanitation marketing project in 2013 that aimed to improve the access to this market. Initial work focused on assessment of demand and supply at a local level, and some assessment of the institutional environment to assess the projects likely challenges. Demand was found to be high, particularly for aspirational products, but a lack of affordability and remoteness to target communities increasing prices were likely to become key challenges. Following 12 months of formative work, including product development and branding, sales commenced with the sale of 394 products in 3 months