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Ozwater Report
WASH WORKSHOP Presented by AWA’s WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene in Developing Communities) Specialist Network
• Increased hand-washing • Sustainable village maintenance • Increase in construction
The AWA WASH Specialist Network presented a workshop on the problem that plagues aid projects again and again, large or small – taking projects so brilliant in innovation and life-changing potential to nothing but a pile of rubble – and stories of what was, for a short while, a successful initiative.
• Increase in participation of women in program
Sustaining WASH behaviour… how do we do it? The workshop was called ‘Sustaining WASH Behaviour Change Through Participatory Approaches in Developing Countries and Remote Australia – An Interactive Experience’. It explored a number of methodologies that try to create change around WASH behaviour in developing communities for human health goals.
The Red Cross is currently looking at whether this approach can be adopted in the Solomon Islands, but has been used widely in parts of Africa.
The approaches themselves applied to engage a community to change the existing day-to-day WASH practices are variable, but so are their successes and failures. Research into the targeted community is necessary to understand the existing WASH practices, to tailor an approach that will more likely succeed than fail in working with the community to achieve their WASH goals. The workshop featured case studies from two professional WASH women, Sarah Davies, a Water and Sanitation in Emergencies Manager for the Australian Red Cross based in Melbourne; and Kylie Climie, a Senior Community Engagement Officer for Power and Water Corporation working with Indigenous communities of the Northern Territory, and based in Darwin. Sarah Davies started her presentation with a video featuring “Silas” from the Solomon Islands, talking about how the Red Cross had helped his community identify problems such as malaria and diarrhoea, and educate them on hygiene practices like keeping animals away from water sources.
CLTS: COMMUNITY-LED TOTAL SANITATION The aim of the CLTS approach is to achieve ‘open defecation-free status’.
This approach uses trigger activities such as shock, disgust and shame, to change behaviour quickly. The steps in this process are: • Pre-trigger > Select community and build rapport > Map defecation areas • Trigger > Identify dirtiest areas – shame > Calculate how much faeces is being produced and link it to disease > Identify disgust pathways, for example, a glass of water versus a glass of water containing a piece of hair touched by faeces • Post-trigger > Informed choice manual. Once the community want to change, provide technical options to build sanitation Some of the challenges faced were:
She then introduced two different approaches to improve hygiene practices:
• Quality of facilitation and follow-up
• PHAST
• Sustainable change
• CLTS
• Ensuring social inclusion (poor, disabled etc)
PHAST: PARTICIPATORY HYGIENE AND SANITATION TRANSFORMATION
• Community resources
This approach empowers the community to take responsibility and gain an understanding of sanitation issues. In the Solomon Islands, the Red Cross facilitates the approach, while the community itself does the work. There are seven steps to PHAST: • Identification • Analysis • Planning solutions • Selecting options • Planning new facilities and behaviour change • Planning monitoring and evaluation • Participatory evaluation Successes of this approach have been: • Modest impact on health • Increased knowledge about disease transmission
• Difficult locations to gain access to, such as war zones Learning from the experience in Africa: • Listening to and respecting local culture