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(The recent SACOSAN gave an opportunity to understand first hand from Dr M Geetha, Mission Director, Chhatisgarh, steps being taken by the State towards achieving an open daefecation free status. This blog is based on the same)
An important change agreed upon is the creation of a SACOSAN Secretariat and a Working Group, to facilitate communication and horizontal learning between the biennial conferences. The Sri Lankan government has volunteered to host the Secretariat.
Another point in the declaration is to reach out to other multi-country fora with information and advocacy for sanitation improvement. SAARC, the regional coalition, was specifically mentioned; and a SAARC representative spoke in the concluding ceremony.
Leave No One Behind
Presentation by an Afghan woman (Adiba Quraishi): We women do not use public toilets. We are embarrassed to be seen going into them. During these last few days, I have learned that governments are doing a lot.
Session on Community Approaches to Sanitation and Hygiene
The eight large and small countries involved in these biennial South Asia Sanitation Conferences (SACOSAN) differ in important ways. The Maldives is an island nation. Bhutan and Nepal are mountainous areas. Bangladesh’s, Afghanistan’s, and Pakistan’s populations are majority Muslim. India, of course, is the largest and most diverse. And Sri Lanka may be the most advanced in terms of literacy and other development indicators. Sri Lanka has recently experienced civil war and a tsunami, which also hit the Maldives. Nepal had a terrible earthquake last spring.
Azafady UK’s three-year sanitation and hygiene initiative, Project Malio, has recently reached its halfway point promoting sustained behavior change and latrine use in the coastal town of Fort Dauphin, southeast Madagascar. Using an adapted version of the Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) methodology, Project Malio aims to eliminate – or at the very least significantly reduce – open defecation in Fort Dauphin by working with households, schools, communities and local government.
Listening to the People
On 7th November 2015, eighteen months after its first confirmed case of Ebola, Sierra Leone declared itself free of the Ebola epidemic.
On the 11th and 12th November 2015, the German WASH-Network, an alliance of 19 German NGOs, is hosting an international conference on the nexus between WASH and nutrition security in Bonn.
The weather was lovely, as were the red and yellow colours of the fall trees, for the last day of the conference. A water filter vendor packed up his things and wheeled them to his car. Friends, old and new, took pictures of each other. The hosts served yet another fine lunch when the programme ended at noon. Everyone’s a little weary. It has been an intense week for the many gathered scientific researchers, government representatives, field workers, and others. For me it was a good chance for new learning, right up to the end.
Today I continued to follow the conversation about new directions in the over-all system of international WASH development. There is a lot of talk about changing the way aid business is conducted. But it’s hard to say how all this lofty talk will translate into actually useful change. I sensed some frustration on the part of developing country governmental reps and residents. No one’s talking about power dynamics. I also listened to some interesting sanitation reports.
