The Drum Beat 528 - Communicating for Sanitation
This issue includes:
- Addressing sanitation through BEHAVIOUR CHANGE COMMUNICATION.
- Interact within our new SOCIAL NETWORKING PLATFORM!
- ENGAGING children and communities in sanitation action.
- Join our NEW & RENEWING CI ASSOCIATES!
- SOCIAL MARKETING approaches to sanitation.
- Snapshot: how PARTNERSHIPS have supported sanitation communication.
- Vote in a POLL on the response to the crisis in Haiti.
This issue of The Drum Beat features a selection of recent knowledge on sanitation, handwashing, and hygiene available on The Communication Initiative website. These case studies, reports, and resources illustrate just a few ways in which communication and media are contributing to the health of children and communities using, among other communication strategies, social marketing and behaviour change communication, along with partnership-centred approaches.
BEHAVIOUR CHANGE COMMUNICATION FOR SANITATION
1. Woreda Resource Book: Community-Led Total Behaviour Change in Hygiene and Sanitation
This 2008 guide intends to guide regional, district, and local practitioners, as well as to provide technical assistance to understand and undertake a community-led approach to reaching total behaviour change in hygiene and sanitation at scale. The guide offers the basic tenets of a learning-by-doing approach, incorporating a hybrid of Community-led Total Sanitation, state-of-the-art household and community behaviour change techniques, and a "Whole System in the Room" multi-stakeholder process. It is based on the experiences of the water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) movement in Amhara Region of 20 million in Northern Ethiopia.
The overarching aim of the Diorano-WASH initiative is to reduce poverty by addressing the issues of water supply, sanitation, and hygiene. The premise of the Diorano-WASH initiative was that solely providing water services would not lead to substantial health improvements or poverty alleviation without an equivalent focus on sanitation and hygiene behaviour. For this reason, a large advocacy and awareness-raising effort was developed to complement the supply of water and sanitation infrastructure. Different campaigns were developed which involved schools, health centres, and the general public and used photography, theatre, radio drama, mass media, and interpersonal communication to promote messages related to washing hands, the use of latrines, and safeguarding water supplies.
Contact: Jean Herivelo Rakotondrainibe rjherivelo@yahoo.fr OR Edith Veromaminiaina EdithVeromaminiaina@wateraid.org
3. Ethiopia Water Supply, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) Movement - Ethiopia
The goal of the Ethiopia WASH movement is to contribute to the reduction of morbidity and mortality by promoting improved water, sanitation, and hygiene practices, and by gaining the political and social commitment and endorsement required to make a difference in the country's water, sanitation, and hygiene situation. Campaign activities include disseminating multi-media messages to promote behaviour change, working with the media to build awareness and capacity for writing sanitation and hygiene stories, and facilitating opportunities for advocacy.
Contact: Michael Negash mchlgeh@yahoo.com OR wsscc@wsscc.org
4. Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) Training in Ethiopia - Ethiopia
This sanitation programme, developed by Plan Ethiopia in 2007, was designed to promote good sanitation behaviour and eliminate the practice of open defaecation in Fura Kebele village in Ethiopia. The project utilised community-led total sanitation (CLTS) - an approach that aims to mobilise communities to identify their problems and work out their own solutions to improving sanitation and hygiene behaviour. The approach involves training a number of local people in CLTS principles and methods. This is followed by field exercises where participants have the opportunity to work with communities from different villages on the issue of open defaecation.
Contact: feedback@plan-international.org
by Arvind Singhal, Prucia Buscell, and Keith McCandless
This 2009 report explores an initiative created and undertaken by the Plexus Institute and the Positive Deviance Initiative (PDI) in an effort to reduce hospital-acquired infections (HAIs). At one United States clinic, health care workers took part in improv sessions. In one, a physician, while examining a patient's leg wound that was oozing brown goo (actually: chocolate pudding), paused to shake hands with the patient's family, patted a nurse's back, touched some objects, and resumed the examination. Within seconds, the brown stains made visible how invisible bacteria spread. Hand hygiene data were collected through anonymous observation, and then the staff in each unit received a graph documenting their observed performance.
THE CI'S NEW SOCIAL NETWORKING SPACE: FEEDBACK NEEDED!
We have recently expanded the capacity of The CI platform to support your social networking relative to your social and economic development goals, objectives, and strategies!
A recent edition of The Drum Beat announces and explains the registration process, provides easy access to existing groups, and encourages you to create your own!
We need your feedback on this new social networking platform! We have established two processes for your comments and guidance:
- Please join the group "Improving The CI's Social Networking Platform" to provide us with feedback, ideas, problems, issues, and opportunities. Join by clicking here.
- Please vote in a Poll within the above-mentioned "Improving The CI's Social Networking Platform" Group to help us refine the working title of our new social networking platform, which is: "Development Networks". The Poll features some initial ideas for names; if none of the options suits you, please contribute your own suggestions through the Comment facility associated with the Poll - click here.
ENGAGING CHILDREN AND COMMUNITIES
6. WASH Training Package for Prevention of Diarrheal Disease
Made available in 2009, the "Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Improvement Training Package for the Prevention of Diarrheal Disease" provides information for organisations worldwide that seek to add WASH activities to their current programmes or to start a diarrhoea reduction programme. It is intended to support the training of local outreach workers and their work in communities to promote improved WASH practices to reduce diarrhoea. The Training Package consists of 3 separate parts: "Guide for Training Outreach Workers"; "Outreach Worker's Handbook"; and "Collection of Resource Materials".
7. Can Hygiene be Cool and Fun? Insights from School Children in Senegal
by Myriam Sidibe and Val Curtis
This 2007 document shares information from a research project conducted in primary schools in Dakar, Senegal, to explore motivating factors for children to adopt hygienic hand-washing and toilet practices. Carried out by the Hygiene Centre of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in collaboration with UNICEF Senegal, the Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) Africa, and the National Office of Sanitation in Senegal, the research suggests that relatively simple, low-cost interventions can have far-reaching effects in improving children's hygiene practices if communicators take into account motivational factors and children’s sensitivities in relation to toilet practice and personal hygiene.
8. The World's Longest Toilet Queue - Global
This mass mobilisation event and Guinness World Record attempt aims to bring together thousands of campaigners from communities across the world for advocacy around the issue of clean water and safe sanitation for all. Prior to World Water Day, March 22 2010, the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC), End Water Poverty, and Freshwater Action Network began asking water and sanitation professionals, journalists, and advocates across the world to unite around a single mass campaign action: The World's Longest Toilet Queue. The campaign is designed to encourage individuals, organisations, and governments all over the world to demand real change as (so-called) developed country politicians gather for the High-Level Meeting on Sanitation and Water in Washington, DC (United States) on April 22 2010.
Contact: Emily.Deschaine@wsscc.org
9. Child-to-Child Sanitation Clubs - Mozambique
This project was initiated by the United Nations International Children's Fund (UNICEF) after a 2000 study found that 80% of all primary schools in Beira, Mozambique, had no toilets for boys or girls and no hand-washing facilities. UNICEF set up peer education and the formation of sanitation clubs in an effort to raise awareness about the importance of proper sanitation and hygiene among schoolchildren, teachers, and parents in the outlying areas. The child-to-child sanitation clubs use a peer education model in which older youth between the ages of 17 and 24 are trained as facilitators to spread messages about the importance of sanitation and hygiene to schoolchildren through various interactive strategies.
Contact: maputo@unicef.org
See also:
Welcome to 2 NEW CI ASSOCIATES and 2 RENEWING CI ASSOCIATES!
Our thanks to the following organisations for contributing to the support of The CI Network by recently becoming NEW CI Associates:
Our gratitude as well to the following organisations for once again supporting The CI Network through their RENEWED CI Associates contributions:
- International Development Research Centre (IDRC)
- Media Project Southern Africa of the Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation
Please consider joining these and other CI Associates who are helping preserve, sustain, and advance this growing knowledge sharing and strategic development process. Many levels of participation are open!
For a full list of current CI Associates, please click here.
For details and to sign up, please click here. Thank you.
SANITATION SOCIAL MARKETING
10. Warning: Habits May Be Good for You
by Charles Duhigg
This 2008 article describes the work of Dr. Val Curtis, director of the Hygiene Centre at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, to persuade people in the developing world to wash their hands habitually with soap in order to prevent diseases and disorders caused by dirty hands - like diarrhoea. Dr. Curtis worked with 3 consumer goods companies to find out how to sell hand-washing through consumer marketing. The corporations had worked on creating automatic behaviours - habits - among consumers by finding the subtle cues in consumers' lives that the corporations could use to introduce new routines. According to the article, through experiments and observation, social scientists have learned that there is power in tying certain behaviours to habitual cues through advertising.
by Marion W. Jenkins and Beth Scott
This 2006 report documents a survey conducted in Ghana to assess demand and decision-making around sanitation and to identify strategies for sanitation marketing. The authors compare motivating and constraining factors at each stage of adoption of sanitation practices and discuss strategies likely to increase toilet installation in Ghana. According to the report, recognising where and how marketing can affect household sanitation decisions is the first of several challenges for sanitation managers wanting to use marketing approaches to increase demand for and access to improved sanitation. This study uses a model of household sanitation adoption decisionmaking that accounts for motivation, opportunity, and ability.
12. The Case for Marketing Sanitation
This 2004 field note from the publication Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) Field Notes analyses the social marketing of sanitation - the hygienic disposal of human excreta - as an approach to stimulate the market for private sector suppliers. According to WSP research, "most progress in access has been achieved by the market - private suppliers supplying individual households. Marketing has been more successful than anything else in changing the behaviour of people when they can see direct personal benefits. The purpose of this field note is to explain the marketing." http://www.comminit.com/en/node/265770
See also:
PARTERNSHIPS TO SUPPORT SANITATION
13. Nepal Country Brief: Promoting Household Water Treatment and Hygiene
This June 2009 brief highlights the approach, accomplishments, and challenges of the Nepal Hygiene Improvement Project (NHIP), which promoted better hygiene practices, including safe treatment and storage of drinking water and handwashing with soap, in 4 pilot districts in Nepal. The project was supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Hygiene Improvement Project from 2006-2008 in collaboration with UNICEF and the Nepal Department of Water Supply and Sewerage. The report details the activities conducted as part of NHIP's main channels: capacity building, mass awareness, facilitation of product availability, and advocacy (scale-up).
14. Ghana Public-Private Partnership to Promote Handwashing with Soap - Ghana
This 2-year initiative sought to reduce morbidity and mortality among children under 5 years old through an integrated communication campaign promoting handwashing with soap to prevent diarrhoeal diseases. Launched in 2003 by the Community Water and Sanitation Agency (CWSA), the campaign was organised around the slogan "For Truly Clean Hands, Always Wash with Soap". Activities included: mass media; direct consumer contact; a district-level programme conducted through schools, health centres, and communities; and a public relations and advocacy component.
Contact: Nana A. Garbrah-Aidoo handwash@ghana.com and Eloy Parra eparra.wsp@gmail.com
by Parameswaran Iyer, Jennifer Sara, Valerie Curtis, Beth Scott, Jason Cardosi
This handbook, published in 2000 by the Global Public Private Partnership for Handwashing, outlines an approach to the promotion of handwashing with soap. It is designed for staff in government and development organisations and decisionmakers in ministries and funding agencies who are either designing policies and programmes to improve public health or carrying out handwashing programmes. It is based on and includes research on the prevention of diarrhoeal diseases in children.
by Camille Saadé, Massee Bateman, and Diane B. Bendahmane
This 2001 document describes an initiative of the Basic Support for Child Survival Project (BASICS II) and the Environmental Health Project (EHP-BASICS) initiative that brought together soap companies, government ministries, international donor organisations, non-governmental organisations, and the media in 3 Central American countries to promote handwashing with soap to prevent diarrhoeal disease. The experience documented in this publication illustrates that public-private partnerships can achieve positive public health results. The publication also describes essential elements required in forming public-private partnerships, discusses lessons learned from the experience in Central America, and outlines key steps for replication.
See also:
Please VOTE in a Poll about the response to the recent crisis in Haiti
How would you rate the international development community's response to the tragedy in Haiti? Why? (Add comments that explain your choice)
Response has been:
- Excellent
- Good
- Appropriate
- Inappropriate
- Average
- Bad
VOTE and COMMENT - click here.
This issue of The Drum Beat was written by Julie Levy.
The Editor of The Drum Beat is Kier Olsen DeVries.
Please send material for The Drum Beat to The CI's Editorial Director - Deborah Heimann dheimann@comminit.com
The Drum Beat seeks to cover the full range of communication for development activities. Inclusion of an item does not imply endorsement or support by The Partners.
To reproduce any portion of The Drum Beat, click here for our policy.
To subscribe, click here.
- Log in to post comments