Community Led Total Sanitation

Community Discusion on Sanitation Options (Image Source)

CLTS was brought into existence in the early 2000's by Kamal Kar (Mehta and Movik, 2011), in India, since then, around 20 million people have reaped the benefits of CLTS worldwide, a large proportion of which residing in Africa. 

Thought to be the cause of its' success, CLTS recognises that simply subsidising and providing toilets does not necessarily mean the end to unhygienic habits, which have been practised freely for hundreds of years. 

As a result of its positive outcome, CLTS has led to thousands of low-cost latrines and toilets being placed all across Africa. In the case of CLTS these will be at least partially built by villagers out of locally sourced materials. This allows for the process of building these facilities to be reproducible for villagers, providing them with life long skills. 

Due to the involvement of the local community in CLTS, schemes have been found to give villagers an increased sense of pride and dignity. Additionally, sanitation is not as much of a taboo subject in villages as much as it used to be, especially for women who would have been taught to be ashamed of their sanitary requirements.

There are few criticisms of CLTS, however, those that exist are largely focussed around the quantification and credibility of CLTS' success. In opposition to this, the results of CLTS schemes can be observed in the increase of open defecation free communities (Luthi et al., 2010).

Over the next two posts, differing case studies of CLTS implementation will be explored. The successes and failures of each example will be outlined.