Further details on CLTS in Indonesia

Challenges:
• Technical/practical - Higher level of ground water demands more sophisticated designs of latrine to prevent over flooding.
• Behavioural - Changing many years of open defecation behaviour and habits takes time. Families living on the banks of the rivers or very close to river and canals didn’t want to change habit easily.
• Bureaucratic/institutional - Old mind-sets amongst line department government staff (latrine construction-focused, hardware subsidies-dependent, counting latrines instead of monitoring communitywide behaviour change).
• Subsidies - News of subsidy being distributed in nearby villages by other programmes/projects dampens the spirit of self-mobilisation by the local communities.
• Staff - Availability of time for the WSLIC-II project staff to follow-up CLTS villages after triggering. The staff have to do this in their spare time in addition to their normal work.

Successes
• Natural Leaders: Natural leaders emerged from all successful CLTS villages. In most villages the heads of villages were found to be the main driving force behind the success. However, local village youth, men and women, local elites, Imams, schoolteachers and others also emerged as natural leaders.
• Innovation: Members of the community designed locally appropriate toilet models to combat the problem of the rising water table.
• Gotong Royong (the concept of community cooperation/help) is very popular in rural Indonesia – this has helped the community to build their toilets faster.
• Promotion of CLTS: During the weekly religious gathering at which the community organises Koran reading competitions, the matter of cleanliness is a regular discussion topic. Distribution of
caps with the word CLTS embossed on them created great enthusiasm. The other side of the cap bears the caption Pemicu Perubahan meaning ‘One who brings awakening change’.
• Health: The fall in the number of patients after initiation of CLTS in the dusuns (sub village) was remarkable and is backed up by the local health centre’s record of diarrhoea patients, skin disease
incidence and children with worm infestations over four months of assessment. As a result, primary school attendance has also risen remarkably in the CLTS villages. Monthly household medical
expenses have decreased from around Rp 25,000–100,000 (US$ 2.50–10) per month.
• External visitors: Villages are receiving more visitors from towns as the visitors can now stay overnight without having to worry about going to the bush in the morning.

Lessons learned/recommendations
Overall, the scaling up of CLTS in Indonesia seemed to be far less difficult than in India or in Bangladesh.
Reasons for this are:
• Although open defecation is common in rural Indonesia, a more wide-spread practice is defecation in water or streams. As a result, problems common in rural areas in India, Bangladesh, Nepal,
Cambodia, Laos and a few other countries, such as bad smell, flies, dangers of stepping on shit and visible impact of defecation on surroundings, were largely absent in Indonesia. People generally felt that they were clean, even though the opposite was true as everyone was bathing in shit-contaminated water. When CLTS was triggered and the community realised that they were smearing
shit all over their bodies whilst bathing, they immediately withdrew from this practice.
• Overall, rural Indonesian society loves to live a clean life. Washing and cleaning, Suchi (‘being clean’), is part of the daily chores of Indonesian women. Thus, once triggered, CLTS could spread very fast.
• In every village and sub-village, there are Kepala Desas (village chiefs) and Kepala Dusuns (sub village chiefs) who have been formally recognised leaders for many years and are therefore crucial in the process of scaling up CLTS. As local leaders, they can act as champions of the CLTS cause and are able to influence local people and initiate local campaigns. Wives of the village and sub-village chiefs have been very important agents of change.
• In non-WSLIC-II project supported villages, the mind-set of the community was advantageous as these communities are not expecting to receive hardware subsidy or any external material help.
• Training of community Natural Leaders is of immense importance. It is suggested that weeklong training of Natural Leaders and Key Communicators from different provinces should be arranged. The training should take place in locations where the Natural Leaders get ample opportunity to practise and trigger CLTS in new villages, together with local government staff. Focus should also be on building and improving the facilitation skills of Natural Leaders during these training workshops.

(source: Kamal Kar and Petra Bongartz, 2006. Update to IDS Working Paper 257 PDF)