Practical Guide to Triggering Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS)

Community-Led Total Sanitation is based on stimulating a collective sense of disgust and shame among community members as they confront the crude facts about mass open defecation and its negative impacts on the entire community. The basic assumption is that no human being can stay unmoved once they have learned taht they are ingesting other people's faeces. Generally communities react strongly and immediately try to find ways to change this through their own effort.

The aim of CLTS is to trigger self-realisation among community members taht they have need to change their own behaviours, so the facilitator must never lecture or advise on sanitation habits, and should not provide external solutions in the first instance with respect to models of latrine. The goal of the facilitator is purely to help community members see for themselves taht open defecation has disguisting consequences and creates an unpleasant environment. It is then up to community members to decide how to deal with the problem and to take action.

This book is a practical guide for use by frontline extension staff, based on experience of facilitating CLTS in at least eight different countries in South East Asia and in East Africa.

Contents:

Acknowledgements

How to ignite CLTS

The sequence of steps

Introduction and rapport building

Facilitating the sanitation analysis

Mapping of defecation areas

Identifying the dirtiest neighbourhood

Calculations

Triggering CLTS in places where people defecate in open water

Ignition moment

Action planning

Community action and follow up

Scaling up of CLTS