Promising Pathways

What does it take to address poor sanitation, and the multiple health and livelihoods issues associated with it, at a large scale? How can Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) be operationalized at national and subnational levels? What do the strategies for achieving exponential growth of Open Defecation Free (ODF) communities look like? CLTS is a rapidly growing approach to solving the widespread sanitation challenges of the developing world. It is an approach that is proving to be effective in country after country, but most experience with the approach to date has been in a relatively bounded, project-based framework. This book looks at a particular experience in Madagascar of taking CLTS to a much larger scale. The Global Sanitation Funds program in Madagascar, the Fonds dAppui pour lAssainissement (FAA), is in the midst of a remarkable process currently producing thousands of ODF villages, which combine to make ODF communes and ODF districts. Promising Pathways describes some of the mechanisms that have evolved to put this process into action, focusing on innovative strategies and models for scaling up. It identifies and highlights features of the actors and the institutional environment that are key to emerging successes. And it pulls out the lessons that can be applied in other settings where MDG targets for sanitation have not yet been achieved. These lessons are clearly situated in the framework of the bottom-up and community-led principles underpinning the CLTS process. Based on fieldwork conducted at community and national levels in Madagascar during 2013, the research for this publication was guided by Kamal Kar, founder and pioneer of CLTS, and conducted by a CLTS Foundation team. CLTS Foundation is an association of like-minded development professionals and practitioners, focusing on issues around rural and urban sanitation globally. It strives to create a world free from open defecation by means of collective behavioral change of the empowered local communities through capacity building, providing technical support, and influencing national strategies and policies of the countries. The foundation also undertakes research and action-learning initiatives focused toward poverty reduction, rural and urban livelihoods, and governance issues, with CLTS as an entry-point strategy. It is a trust (trust registration no. 03956) being managed by a board of trustees and headed by a chairman with headquarters in Kolkata, India. CLTS Foundation CB 88, Sector 1, Salt Lake Kolkata Pin 700064 India www.cltsfoundation.org