Community Led Total Sanitation in Bolivia

In mid-2006, Dr Kamal Kar was invited by UNICEF Bolivia to introduce the Community Led Total Sanitation approach there. UNICEF Bolivia had come to know about CLTS from the World bank’s Water and Sanitation Programme (WSP) East Asia and Pacific (EAP) in Indonesia and was keen to bring it to Bolivia. The two hands-on workshops that were held in La Paz and Llallagua in December 2006 represented the first time CLTS had been introduced in Latin America.

Sixty participants from at least ten different organizations participated in the three day training cum orientation workshop on CLTS in La Paz. Participants came from Bolivia, Peru, Brazil and Chile and organizations represented included UNICEF, WSP, Plan International, Save the Children Fund, JICA and others.

The second training workshop was held in Llallagua with 28 participants, the majority of whom had attended the workshop in La Paz. Both workshops comprised class room learning about CLTS, its methodology and tools as well as hands-on facilitation of CLTS triggering in nearby villages and a subsequent sharing and analysis of experiences. At the end of the workshop, selected members of the communities where CLTS had been triggered were invited to present their action plans for achieving ODF status. This also attracted much attention from the local media.

Progress from this work and other initiatives in Bolivia are included here.