How can communities be educated on sustainable sanitation technologies?

The targeted participation of children, persons with disability and other vulnerable groups such as the aged, must be emphasized in other to get diverse perspectives of needs and preferences. This is to avoid a situation where the strong voices assume and prescribe the needs and preferences of the vulnerability groups.

I think that we need a holistic approach that combines community involvement, effective communication, practical demonstrations, empowerment through training, collaboration with influential figures, awareness of health and environmental benefits, incentives, financial accessibility, continuous monitoring, and long-term engagement. The goal is to create a sustainable impact, promoting better hygiene practices, reducing environmental impact, and enhancing overall community well-being.

In low income communities, social acceptance is the technology has a direct relationship with affordability. The cost of installation and maintenance of the technology must be within the average affordability ratio of the communities. To help in easy uptake, economic and livelihood interventions can be integrated into the sanitation project to serve as a means of revenue generation for sanitation investment. One of such could be the VSLA and skills development. Also, Prototypes of the technologies can be constructed for selected vulnerable households identified by the community.

Some youth in selected communities can also be trained for installation and post installation works. The number of people trained must be few but accessible to the communities so that it could serve as another livelihood strategy for the trained beneficiaries. If there are too many trained for installation and repair of the facility, many of them end up not getting any work to do.

This is very critical for continuous learning and adjustment to achieve the desired outcomes. Duty bearers must be involved in periodic monitoring to build a system of continuous follow-up even after the project period has elapsed.