TRAINING OF CLTS FACILITATORS WORKSHOP
Training of CLTS Facilitators Workshop- Workshop Report
12-17 November, 2012
SOUTHERN AFRICA REGIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL PROGRAM
Robyn Tompkins – SAREP Water Supply and Sanitation Coordinator
Contract No. 674-C-00-10-00030-00
The author’s views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of the United States Agency for International Development or the United States Government.
Contents
1.SUMMARY OF RECOMMENDATIONS
2.INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW
2.1BACKGROUND
2.2OBJECTIVES
2.3PARTICIPANTS
2.4TRAINERS
2.5OTHER LEADERS
3. Workshop
3.1WORKSHOP PROGRAM AND STRUCTURE
3.2WORKSHOP METHODLOGY
3.3LANGUAGE
3.4WORKSHOP CONTENT
3.5WORKSHOP LOGISTICS
4. WORKSHOP FINDINGS
4.1COMMUNITY TRIGGERING MEETING
4.2RESISTANCE BY COMMUNITY LEADERS
4.3USE OF THE WORD “MASEPA”
4.4BASIC STANDARD FOR PIT LATRINE
4.5SCHOOL PROGRAM
4.6ASSESSMENTS OF PARTICIPANTS’ SKILLS
4.7IMPROVEMENTS TO TRIGGERING METHODOLOGY
4.7.1ADVANCE VISIT
4.7.2GETTING STARTED
4.7.3SHIT MAPPING
4.7.4SHIT WALK
4.7.5SHIT TO HOME/FOOD FLOWS
4.7.6WATER & SHIT DEMONSTRATION
4.7.7PLATE OF FOOD AND SHIT
4.7.8SHIT MATHEMATICS
4.7.9HANDWASHING AND SNACK
4.7.10ACTION PLANNING
5. WORKSHOP OUTPUT
6. NEXT STEPS
7. PARTICIPANTS COMMENTS
ANNEX
ANNEX A:
1.Participants &Trainers
2.Field Practice Teams
ANNEX B:
1.Workshop Program
MONDAY 12 NOVEMBER
TUESDAY 13 NOVEMBER
WEDNESDAY 14 NOVEMBER (PRACTICE IN SMALL GROUPS)
THURSDAY 15 NOVEMBER
FRIDAY 16 NOVEMBER
SATURDAY 17 NOVEMBER
ANNEX C:
Workshop Outputs
C1. OPENING ACTIVITIES
C2. BASELINE SITUATION
C3. BREAKING THE “SHIT” TABOO
C4. WHAT IS CLTS?
C5. WHY STOP OPEN DEFECATION?
C6. COMMUNITY OWNERSHIP & MANAGEMENT
C7. TRAINERS MEETING - END OF DAY ONE
C8. DEMONSTRATION ON TRIGGERING TOOLS
C9. PRACTICE FACILITATION SESSIONS – TUESDAY & WEDNESDAY
C10. REVIEW - FACILITATION SKILLS
C11. TRAINERS’ MEETING - DAYS 2 & 3
C12. FEEDBACK ON FIELD PRACTICE SESSIONS
C13. FOLLOW-UP SUPPORT TO COMMUNITIES AFTER TRIGGERING (Deo)
C14. ACTION PLANNING BY PARTICIPANTS
C15. IMMEDIATE FOLLOW-UP THIS WEEK
C16. HOW TO CHALLENGE RESISTANCE (Paired Role Playing)
ANNEX D: PRACTICE SESSIONS BY SAMOCHIMA TEAM
ANNEX E: EVALUATION
ANNEX F: KEY POINTERS TO IMPROVE TRIGGERING
ANNEX G: MENTORING CHECKLIST (for SAREP Staff)
Key Mentoring Activities
ANNEX H: SONGS AND GAMES
AMATINGALO
BASE BANO BAYE TOLINGIYO (Lingala)
1 – 2 – 3 – 4 MAMA WE DI PO (Eastern Caribbean)
ZANGALEWA (Cameroun)
I WILL MAKE YOU FISHERS OF MEN
CHE CHE KULE (Ghanaian children’s song)
SOFIA (Tanzania)
JAMBO (Tanzania)
NEW CLTS SONGS
CLAPS USED DURING THE WORKSHOP
ACRONYMS
CLTS: Community Lead Total Sanitation
NLs: Natural Leaders
OD: Open Defecation
ODF: Open Defecation
SAREP: Southern Africa Regional Environmental Program
VDC: Village Development Committee
- SUMMARY OF RECOMMENDATIONS
SAREP should organize a baseline study in the project villages to document the number and type of existing toilets. The baseline study should be organized by SAREP and implemented by the newly trained facilitators (supported by a small allowance/honorarium). This information would be particularly useful in planning for and monitoring the impact of SAREP’s work. (Deo Binamungu has provided a template for baseline data collection.)
SAREP should produce clear terms of reference and appropriate incentives for the trained volunteers, and together with the volunteers work out a comprehensive program to ensure that they are available for triggering meetings when required.
SAREP should agree on a basic standard for sanitation – and then prepare handouts and other materials to teach villagers how to build the standard latrine. The materials should include how to build hand washing facilities
SAREP should strengthen its advocacy component to get government and Council to give its full support to the CLTS process. Government should become a major collaborator in planning and implementing the CLTS program to ensure that it has long term sustainability.
For future workshops some trainers and trainees should be selected from government and NGO field workers. Drawing on government and NGO field workers will help to strengthen the teams of CLTS facilitators, create a strong sense of credibility among villagers, and avoid creating the impression that the SAREP intervention is operating on its own.
SAREP should meet with the Environmental Health Department of the North West District Council, get documentation on the National Sanitation Program, find out why households were not completing their toilets, and find out why this program was stopped. SAREP also needs to get information on national and district policies related to sanitation – as an input to strategizing. For example there is a government or NWDC policy requiring every household to have a properly lined and sealed toilet.
There are strong expectations by community leaders that the community should wait and let government provide all services, including sanitation. The CLTS approach uses a self-reliance approach, so it needs to be well prepared to challenge these expectations in some communities. This will require extra work in advance with the village and well prepared facilitators who can challenge the community leaders when they try to subvert the process.
A special effort needs to be made to win the support of and actively involve chiefs, headmen, district councilors, and VDC leaders. Their support will be critical in winning the support of their respective communities. They have substantial influence and can make a huge difference, e.g. in holding villagers to the deadlines for the completion of latrines.
Future work in the communities should make more use of indigenous languages to make it easier for community members to contribute effectively.
SAREP should develop an auxiliary program for triggering in the schools. A smaller group (of four trainees) could be assigned to work in the schools – short two hour sessions during school hours covering selected CLTS methods, and assigning a special role to school children in promoting the stopping of OD and building of toilets
SAREP should also develop video documentation on the CLTS process to help disseminate the approach to other groups of people. Okadel Theatre Group should be encouraged to produce a video drama on the issue of open defecation.
- INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW
From 12th to 17th November 2012 SAREP organized a one week Training of CLTS Facilitators Workshop in Shakawe, north western Botswana. This was the first training workshop to be held on the Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) approach in Botswana, and the first experimental use of this approach at the community level in Botswana.
The aim of the workshop was to test out the CLTS approach and to create teams of facilitators who can facilitate CLTS triggering and follow-up activities in Shakawe and neighboring villages. Shakawe was selected to launch the CLTS program because of the strong community response to community water governance by the Shakawe community. SAREP also has plans to initiate the CLTS program in other cluster areas of Ngamiland, including Gumare and Seronga areas, and also in Angola and Namibia in 2013.
30 participants (16 men, 14 women) attended the workshop, drawn from two sources:
5 SAREP staff and 2 associates (NCONGO member and Peace Corps volunteer)
23 volunteer activists from the Shakawe area – most selected from the newly formed Vision Committee, which is leading SAREP’s environmental activities in Shakawe.
The workshop was facilitated by a team of three lead trainers – Deo Binamungu (Tanzania), Ross Kidd, and Puseletso Kidd, who were assisted by SAREP staff and associates (Gomolemo Mokete, Phuthego Thokomelo, and Livingstone Kentshitswe). The workshop was planned by the trainers and Robyn Tompkins (SAREP WSS Coordinator).
The workshop included demonstration and practice sessions at the workshop site and two days of practice sessions in four communities – Mohembo and Samochima villages and two wards of Shakawe – Ndundu and Mabudutsana (India). The village practice sessions consisted of 3-4 hour community “triggering” meetings involving eight participatory activities to demonstrate the importance of stopping open defecation (OD). There was a good turnout to each of the four meetings – ranging from 30 people in one Shakawe ward to 250 in Mohembo – and there was an enthusiastic response to the CLTS activities. Villagers loved the participatory activities, including songs and claps, and responded by standing up and saying “we want to get rid of all the shit in our village and build toilets”.Teams of 8-10 “natural leaders” were identified in each of the meetings (except Mohembo) – the natural leaders were those who showed a lot of enthusiasm to solve the OD problem and volunteered to lead the ongoing mobilization at the community level to build and use toilets.
Community members accepted the CLTS self-reliance approach – the idea of the community working together to stop open defecation and build toilets, but a few community leaders opposed the new approach, saying that “we should wait for government to build toilets for us.” In one village the VDC leader stopped the emergence of a community initiated approach, but in the other villages the teams were successful in building support for community, self-reliant action.
In the week after the workshop Deo Binamungu, SAREP staff and some trainees organized a series of follow-up activities:
a)Visits to the four communities to meet with the natural leaders for action planning
b)Triggering community meetings in two new villages - Xakao and Sepopa
Over the next two months the new teams of facilitators, supported by Joel Keromang, will conduct triggering meetings in other villages in the Shakawe area – Xhaoga, Nxamasere, Kajaja, Ikoga, Ghani, Chukumuchu, Tsodilo, Kauxwi, Ngarange, Mogotho, and Shakawe wards. Ishmael Nkhwa and Tshiamo Lekgoa will train additional teams of facilitators to do CLTS work in Gumare and Seronga respectively.
2.1BACKGROUND
Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) is a relatively new approach to rural sanitation and the workshop represented the first time for it to be used in Botswana.
CLTS is a new approach to “trigger” large scale community action to stop open defecation (OD) and build and use household toilets, using the energies, resources, and dynamism of communities.It focuses on the whole community, rather than on individual action, and gives more emphasis to behavior change, rather than simply building toilets – an approach which is more sustainable. The “triggering process” involves a 3-4 hour community meeting using participatory activities aimed at making community members disgusted and ashamed about open defecation and the idea of eating shit and wanting to do something about it. Community members analyse the problem and decide together how they will create a clean and hygienic environment that benefits everyone.
This methodology was first piloted in Bangladesh in 1999 where it proved to be highly effective in mobilizing large numbers of communities to stop open defecation and build household toilets. CLTS quickly spread to other parts of Asia and to Africa where it was taken up with enthusiasm. Over the last eight years it has been introduced into 28 countries in Africa. The most successful countries in implementing CLTS on a large scale have been Malawi, Mozambique, and Zambia in Southern Africa, and Eretria, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Uganda in East Africa.
In exploring different approaches to promote practical action on sanitation at the community and household level, SAREP identified CLTS as having tremendous potential for building a strong community response to the problem of open defecation.
The CLTS approach is consistent with SAREP’s own approach of empowering communities to manage and monitor environmental development and promote community managed water supply and sanitation. SAREP’s CLTS program will extend their work in supporting the development of community managed water supply and sanitation, while offering communities a new approach to take action to stop faecally related disease.Getting communities to stop open defecation, especially along the Okavango River, can help to improve water quality in the river, while at the same time improving the health of communities along the river.
SAREP’s CLTS program will use the following approaches:
a)Develop a process for community based triggering, planning and action to stop open defecation and build household latrines that draws on CLTS techniques
b)Build on the widespread acceptance and adoption of community water governance and management in the Shakawe area, and link the issue of improved sanitation to improved water quality in the Okavango
c)Work closely with communities, community based organizations, community volunteers, and government agencies in developing and promoting this program
d)Build the active support of government agencies, including: North West District Council, Tawana Land Board, Tribal Administration, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Agriculture, Departments of Water Affairs, Environmental Affairs, Waste Management and Pollution Control, and environmental and natural resource management NGOs.
SAREP started off its CLTS initiative in Botswana by holding a two day orientation workshop for stakeholders from different government departments in Maun in September 2012. The aim was to introduce the CLTS methodology to district level stakeholders and get their ideas on how to implement this approach in the North West District. As a major outcome of the workshop participants endorsed the idea of implementing CLTS on an experimental basis in rural villages of North West District, starting in the Shakawe area.
Background Situation in Botswana
CLTS in Botswana is not building on a blank slate. There have been other sanitation programs in the past, including a National Sanitation Program which operated 5-10 years ago. Households applied to join the scheme by paying a P30 fee and Council then built the substructure - pit and slab; the household was then asked to complete the superstructure.
The team which visited Mohembo came across several of the toilets built by this program, many of them uncompleted – pit and slab but no superstructure. The team did not find out why the households did not complete the toilets, but they assumed that the scheme was coercive in approach, focused solely on toilet building, and did not educate the community about the importance of stopping open defecation and building toilets to improve health. The new CLTS approach gives much more emphasis to changing attitudes and behavior, rather than simply building toilets – so the new approach is more sustainable.
Recommendation: SAREP should meet with the Environmental Health Department of the North West District Council, get documentation on this earlier program, find out why households were not completing their toilets, and find out why this program was stopped. SAREP also needs to get information on national, district and sub-district policies related to sanitation – as an input to strategizing. For example there is a government or NWDC policy requiring every household to have a properly lined and sealed toilet.
Recommendation:SAREP should also organize a baseline study in the villages in which they are working to document the number and type of existing toilets. The baseline study could be organizedd by SAREP and implemented by the newly trained facilitators (supported by a small allowance/honorarium). This information would be particularly useful in planning for and monitoring the impact of SAREP’s work. (Deo Binamungu has provided a format for the baseline study.)
2.2OBJECTIVES
The specific objectives of the workshop were to:
- Make participants excited, motivated, and inspired to use the CLTS approach
- Help participants develop the awareness, skills, confidence, and teamwork to facilitate the CLTS process at the community level
- Test out the CLTS methodology in Botswana by conducting triggering meetings in four communities in Shakawe area and assessing the community response to this approach
- Test out a training workshop for facilitators and develop the methods, approaches, and materials for training community activists in facilitating the CLTS process
- Document the best approaches for facilitating the triggering process and make revisions to the CLTS Triggering Guide.
Once equipped with the understanding, skills, confidence, and teamwork, those trained would be expected to implement the CLTS process in Shakawe and other villages in the Shakawe area – community triggering meetings and follow-up support. SAREP extension facilitators from Gumare and Seronga would also initiate a similar program in their respective areas.
The workshop was a training event but at the same time it was a field lab to test out the CLTS approach in Botswana. The workshop and community triggering meetings allowed us to test out implementation approaches and to develop a model and materials for the training of community facilitators to implement CLTS at the community level. The materials and experience can be used in scaling up the training of CLTS facilitators in other SAREP cluster areas within Botswana and in SAREP’s program areas in Angola and Namibia.
2.3PARTICIPANTS
30 participants attended the workshop – 16 men and 14 women. This group included:
- 2 SAREP managers, 3 SAREP extension facilitators, and 2 SAREP associates (NCONGO representative and Peace Corps volunteer)
- 19 volunteers from Shakawe and 4 volunteers from Mohembo and Samochima
The aim of the workshop was to create teams of volunteer facilitators who could implement the CLTS process in the Shakawe area. During the workshop trainees worked together in two different teams, practicing and learning how to facilitate the different triggering activities. By the end of the workshop they had developed facilitation skills and the skills of working as a team – how to plan together, allocate roles, take turns in facilitating sessions, and support each other during the triggering process. On the final day the two teams developed their own CLTS implementation plans; and after the workshop the teams began to work together to implement those plans.