From the 27th February to the 1st March, I was attending the Pan Africa CLTS workshop in Accra Ghana. The workshop was sponsored by Plan Netherlands and was facilitated by Prof. Robert Chambers and Petra Bongartz of IDS. 8 countries namely, Ghana, Niger, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Malawi and Zambia participated in the workshop.
Let me share something that struck me strongly during the annual review workshop of the Pan African programme Empowering self-help sanitation of rural and peri-urban communities and schools in Africa which took place in Accra between the 27th February and 1st March 2012.
The four day inter-country review meeting which brought together all the Pan African CLTS program implementing countries has just been concluded. Each participant was tasked to mention in plenary at least 3 key learnings and take-home points. A great majority of the participants mentioned the role of the media, Sanitation Marketing and the actual meaning of action Learning as key learnings.
Going for Community led total sanitation field visits are a big plus for me. The exposure to different communities cultural ways, sanitation practices, culinary methods as you smell their delicacies on the verandah’s while passing their mobile kitchens, and the unmistakable smile of a child, leaves one with sights and sounds engraved in the heart for a long time.
Imagine an open room, lined up with 7 pit latrine squat holes and 7 people can actually defecate in here at the same time! This is what happens in Namandwa village, Ghana- where we have been for a field visit today. The village was triggered and in a bid to stop open defecation, they constructed communal latrines which are separate for men and women.
Yesterday was another exciting of the 4 day Pan-African CLTS Review meeting days. We had an opportunity to undertake a field visit to one of Plan Ghana’s operational areas in the Central Region. It took us close to two hours to reach Amafum Community. We had a warm reception which was followed by formal greetings. The community has a total population of 1,200 people comprising of 220 households.
Post ODF sustainability
Participants were divided into 4 groups to discuss the different expectations that were pulled from all the participants during the first day of the meeting.
The expectations were grouped as follows:
Institute of Development Studies [IDS] facilitators never seem to run out of participatory facilitation techniques and this time round, discussion themes are developed from participant expectation cards. The themes varied from Natural leaders [interesting, I also picked this up during day 1] , sanitation marketing, children and CLTS, scaling up , gender issues, partnerships and collaborations, overcoming subsidy- among others. Participants are asked to vote for at least 2 themes they are most interested to participate in and from this exercise.
As part of the agenda for day two at the Annual Review meeting of the Pan African CLTS Program, action learning and research has been highlighted as a key component for the program in order to facilitate documentation, experience sharing and scaling up of CLTS. It was also emphasized that action learning is a continuous process; it involves observing, reflecting, documenting and sharing.
