Resources

This report gives account of the VERC (Village Education Resource Centre) project undertaken in seven districts (Bhola, CoxÆs Bazar, Chittagong, Rajashahi, Naogaon and Chapai Nawabganj) to develop a total community empowerment approach towards achieving 100% sanitized villages. The report gives a background to the VERC Water and Sanitation Programme and describes the 100% Sanitized Approach which is based on the assumption that communities have their own strength and willingness to overcome their own water and sanitation problems. The activities involved in the programme are explained step-by-step including PRA (Participatory Rural Appraisal); formation of a water and sanitation action committee; meetings with the committee and with the community; formation of union steering committee; meetings with union steering committee; formation of cultural group; community cleaning exercise; construction and installation of equipment and hardware; set up of rural sanitation engineering groups; formation of water point management committee; health and hygiene education sessions; monitoring behavioural changes; and implementing the approach. Two appendices are included describing details of the different latrine options on use in communities and the structure of project staff organisation.

This article traces a participatory research model used in six village communities in the Central Region of the North-West of South Africa in order to achieve the following broad objectives: to obtain information on the challenges owners face in raising livestock in these areas and to evaluate the livestock owners' level of knowledge of internal parasites in their animals. Participatory workshops revealed a need for improvements in water supply, schools, job creation, and health services; and that lack of pasture for grazing livestock was an important issue. With regards to treatment of animals it was found that most owners used a combination of treatment ranging from traditional to folklore to commercial. Difficulties encountered in using participatory methods were due to the fact that it was the first time that the facilitators and the communities had been exposed to them, and as a result many had difficulty in dealing with the concept of finding solutions within the community, which is an integral part of participatory methods.

As part of the special 50th edition of PLA notes, this article looks at the evolution of a particular methodology for the participatory assessment of water and sanitation projects in rural Nepal. The methodology - NPA (Nepal Water for Health Participatory Assessment) - evolved because the staff implementing the methodology for participatory assessment found that the process was long, costly, relied on strong facilitation and created high expectations. The authors then go on to describe the evolution of the NPA in response to these criticisms, and describe the challenges as well as potentials of using the NPA approach. In conclusion, the article comments that the evolution of NPA is an example of how with hard word and dedication, the group were able to take a useful methodology and improve it to make it more suitable for their own purposes and context.

This is a short article published by Jal Manthan, a think tank on rural water supply and sanitation. The document provides an overview of the successes of participatory and empowering approaches to promoting community sanitation compared with subsidy-based approaches. Focusing on examples in Bangladesh and India, the article looks at facilitating change through PRA tools, building community institutions, and key questions such as what triggers behaviour change? The document looks particularly at approaches adopted by the Village Education Resource Centre (VERC) in Bangladesh. Standard approaches to sanitation focus on latrine-building that is done in an infinite time frame and is financially driven by a subsidy program. In contrast, the VERC model focused on eliminating open defecation in a short-time frame that was demand driven. Some of they key lessons identified in the VERC Bangladesh case study were the empowerment of communities that accompanies the paradigm shift from technocratic and financial patronage to participatory approaches; the absence of a household-level subsidy but instead a focus on collective efforts (such as the subsidy money for each household to be put instead into a collective village development fund); the public good dimensions of what is often considered a private good; the effect of peer pressure and monitoring systems on enhancing sustainability; and that the abundance of local sanitation technologies indicates that there is a significant demand in the area. The following requirements were identified as important requirements for effective implementation of the governmentÆs Total Sanitation Campaign: build the capacity of local governments and support local organisations; design appropriate models/ strategies for implementation; support pilots and demonstration projects; support policy debate at the Sate-level to scale-up the approach; and facilitate regional exchanges.