Plan International Pakistan, under the umbrella of DFID funded South Asia WASH Results Program, is supporting the Government of Punjab, in their initiative to achieve Open Defecation Free (ODF) Punjab, by 2018 1 along with providing entrepreneurial prospects to 29 women and 246 men to promote sanitation. The project has reached 894,524 beneficiaries in 9 districts with the message to improve their sanitation and hygiene practices.

CATS is UNICEF’s core strategy to eliminate open defecation, in line with Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6.2: to ‘achieve access to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all and end open defecation, paying special attention to the needs of women and girls and those in vulnerable situations’.4 CATS has scaled up rapidly since its 2008 inception, with implementation in over 60 countries: approximately 48 million people now live in open defecation free communities that previously did not.5 With these achievements come even greater challenges.

This case study explores IFRC’s innovation process in developing and testing a comprehensive relief item to meet more effectively and appropriately the menstrual hygiene needs of women and girls in emergencies.

Having learnt a lot from Malda and Cooch Behar about scaling up the CLTS approach, the Centre for Sustainable Solutions in Social Welfare started a pilot in the district of Bankura in West Bengal. There was a theory in the state, much promoted by an agency implementing the national sanitation programme in the adjoining district of Purulia, that while the CLTS approach worked in the districts of Malda and Cooch Behar, it would not work in the twin districts of Bankura and Purulia.