| Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS)
A
guide to facilitating communities to stop open defecation
and
to build and use latrines, without offering external subsidies.
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Background |
Poor
access to adequate sanitation, resulting in the practice of widespread
open defecation, has negative health and social impacts on communities,
particularly in terms of diseases such as diarrhoea and cholera.
Community-led total sanitation (CLTS) involves facilitating a process
to inspire and empower rural communities to stop open defecation
and to build and use latrines, without offering external subsidies
to purchase hardware such as pans and pipes.
Through the use of PRA methods community members analyse their own
sanitation profile including the extent of open defecation and the
spread of faecal-oral contamination that detrimentally affects every
one of them. The CLTS approach ignites a sense of disgust and shame
among the community. They collectively realise the terrible impact
of open defecation: that they quite literally will be ingesting
one another’s ‘shit’ so long open defecation continues.
This realisation mobilises them into initiating collective action
to improve the sanitation situation in the community.
This basic ‘how-to’ guide aims to help frontline staff
and field facilitators to understand the philosophy and principles
of CLTS, and to use some of the practical tools and techniques flexibly
and freely.
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Guide to tools |
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