Petra Bongartz

CLTS strategically provokes strong emotions such as shock, disgust, embarrassment and shame and the concurrent (positive) emotions like pride, self-respect and dignity, to trigger community’s collective action towards stopping open defecation.

Many critics of CLTS have latched onto the ‘shame’ element of CLTS in particular, arguing that this is unethical and a questionable way of creating change. The way these commentators understand it, in CLTS outside facilitators ‘shame’ communities into taking action.

From the 27th February to the 1st March, the annual review meeting of the Pan African programme Empowering self-help sanitation of rural and peri-urban communities and schools in Africa is taking place just outside Accra, Ghana.

Handwashing in Mutara, MozambiqueRecently we have had a very lively debate about a number of key issues, so rather than keeping those discussions limited to emails flying back and forth between a few people, I am going to share them here.

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What better way to start off this new CLTS blog than with the excitement and buzz from AfricaSan 3, which took place in Kigali last week? We had four intense days of learning, networking and sharing experiences with many of the over 900 delegates that attended the conference.

Even in the run up to the conference it was clear that CLTS in Africa has come a long way since the last AfricaSan in Durban in February 2008.

This is a new space for sharing reflections, ideas, experiences, opinions, innovations, challenges, questions and inspirations in an easy and informal way. We hope you will find it useful and enjoy the possibilities for further networking, connecting and interacting with other CLTS and sanitation practitioners across the globe that a blog can open up! Do let us know what you think!

We welcome your contributions and would be thrilled to see you become a regular blogger.