Q: I am interested in low budget sanitation (latrines) for women in my village. About 60% of the house holds do not have toilets. The govt does not provide subsidy. Also the houses are clustered and the people do not know how to construct toilets. Please guide us.
Local politician, India
Answer:
(by Christine Sijbesma, IRC). I will describe the steps that could be followed to start up a sanitation programme, and continue with the types of toilets you can choose from.
STEPS TO TAKE TO START UP A SANITATION PROGRAMME
1) Village sanitation walk
2) Organization of toilet discussion meetings
3) Visits to completed toilets
4) Joint implementation
5) Hygiene education on toilet use and maintenance
6) Monitoring of proper maintenance and use
7) Lack of space
8) Washing hands
9) Operation of a bathhouse
10) Helping people who cannot construct latrines
1) Village sanitation walk
The first step that you may want to take is to organize a village sanitation walk to the open defecation areas. Get as many people (women and men, young and older) to join you on the walk. The purpose of the walk is that everyone will agree on the need to end open defecation, and that all will decide to make the village a ‘total sanitation village’.
2) Organization of toilet discussion meetings
The second step may be to organize a village meeting or meetings to discuss the benefits of toilets and the types of toilets that people can install. Participants are as many male and female family heads as you can get from the families in your village that do not yet have a toilet. If necessary, you can organize several smaller meetings in different sections of the village.
There would be two purposes for the meeting:
1. To find out how many and which families are interested in building a toilet
2. To inform them about the types of toilets that they can install.
You need the following material in the meeting:
· A pile of small slips of paper, several felt tipped pens and a pile of small branches, grass stalks or pieces of string;
· Pictures of different types of household toilets and different types of construction materials. The pictures are in the attached file. You will need to print each picture on a separate piece of paper. If you put each picture into a transparent plastic folder, they can be used many times and still stay clean.
First group activity: Benefits of toilets
After you have introduced the purpose of the meeting, you start the first activity.
This activity is to find out why people without a latrine may want to build and use one.
You start this activity by asking one or more volunteers who are literate and who will write on the slips. Ask them to write the word toilet on the first slip.
Now ask the group to discuss what the benefits are of having a toilet. When someone in the group mentions a benefit, the volunteer writes it on the slip (one benefit per slip). A second benefit is written on a second slip, etc.
The volunteer hands the slip back to the person who mentioned it. This person lays the slip down next to the slip with the word ‘latrine’ and connects the two using a stick, stalk or piece of string.
Other members of the group may mention other benefits. Sometimes they are direct benefits of having a household toilet (examples: not having to walk far, not having to wait until dark). However, there may also be an indirect benefit (example: ‘more hygienic’ may lead to ‘more healthy’). The slip with ‘more healthy’ is then placed next to the slip ‘more hygienic’, with the slip ‘more hygienic’ connected on one side with the slip with ‘latrine’ and on the other side with the slip ‘more healthy’. In this way, you help the group to make a whole network of reasons for having and using a latrine.
It is often useful to do this activity in two or three smaller groups: one with all the adult women, one with all the adult men, and one with the local youth. When each group has made their network, the three groups visit each other and each group explains to the others what they have put in their network.
In the end, the groups may want to make one big network, or simply count how many reasons are the same for all groups and how many are different. In this way, the activity brings out the many reasons for a toilet and the differences between older and young women and men for having a toilet.
Second group activity: Types of toilets
After there is agreement about why those without a toilet would want to build one, you can go into what types of toilets people can build and how much it would cost to build the different types. Other requirements come also out, for example, some types of toilets require water to be collected for flushing, and others can be used dry. The first type may mean more work for women and children to collect water, and problems with water shortages in summer. Some types of toilets also need more space than others and/ or are costlier to build.
For discussing the types of toilets available, you give the group(s) a set of printed drawings of the different latrine types. You ask the group to place them on the floor. You ask them to look at each drawing and discuss which types of toilet they know and which they do not know. To answer any questions on the toilet types, see the separate sheet on ‘types of toilets’.
When the groups have discussed the different drawings, you ask them to place the drawings into a ‘toilet ladder’, with the lowest type of sanitation at the bottom and the highest at the top. People may do this according to how costly each type of sanitation would be, but also which type would mean the most work, or would be the best for the environment (for possible answers see the ‘types of toilet’ sheet).
When they have agreed on the ‘toilet ladder’, you can present the drawings of the ‘types of material’. The drawings help people to understand that one can make cheap or expensive toilets. They also help people to understand that you can upgrade a toilet. For example, a household may first build a pit, place a slab over it, and make a screen from poles and jute. Then, when they have money again, they may build a more permanent wall and roof, but still use a curtain or a loose screen for door. Finally, they may put in a proper door. Inside, they may also make improvements gradually, for example, whitewash the walls or cover (part of) the walls with easy-to-clean tiles.
Using the drawings and the local costs for the different materials, you can now help the participants to make a rough costing of the construction of the type of household latrines in which they are interested.
Give couples and families time to discuss the information among them and note down (either after the meeting or later) who would like to build a household toilet.
Discuss also with the women, the men and the youths (girls and boys) how they see their roles in building and using toilets and in promoting hygienic habits among their peers and young brothers and sisters. Fathers can for example set a good example of toilet use to their children and encourage sons to assist in water collection (or help collection themselves, e.g. by using transport or allowing women to use a bicycle or other means of transport for easier water collection. Encourage people to discuss the amount of work in water collection for the toilets and help them find creative solutions on how to reduce or divide this work.
3) Visits to completed toilets
A third activity can be to ask households who have already constructed a toilet, if they are willing to show their toilet to other families in the village who want to build one. Ask them if they will inform those wanting a latrine about the costs, who made the construction, what they like about it, and what could have been done different/better.
If these are costly toilets, it is important to remind those without one that a simple latrine is better than open defecation.
4) Joint implementation
If there are enough households who want a dry pit toilet and/or a pour-flush toilet, they can consider going for bulk installation. If a group of persons together go to buy the materials and hire a mason to build the toilets, they can often negotiate better prices and/or higher quality materials.
The construction of the first latrine can also serve to check the quality and the actual construction costs. Householders should make sure that they do not pay the whole price upfront, but that they retain funds to pay the final bit only after they are satisfied with the installed toilets.
Simple pit latrines can be built by the householders themselves.
5) Hygiene education on toilet use and maintenance
This is an important part of any toilet programme. Hygiene education before the construction can help in convincing people to build/use a toilet, although there are often more social, economic and cultural reasons for building and using a toilet.
Hygiene education after construction is very important to make sure that everyone in the family uses the toilet and uses it in a hygienic manner. It is often better to discuss separately with the women and the men in the household if they are using the toilet and what they do to keep it clean. This makes it possible to discuss also with the men if they use the toilet and how they see their roles in household sanitation and hygiene.
6) Monitoring of proper maintenance and use
For total sanitation, it is important to monitor each newly installed latrine:
· Is the whole family actually using it, and not only the women and girls of the family?
· Is it used in an hygienic manner?
· Is it properly operated? (For example, do people understand why and when they need to switch the plug in the junction box (Y trap) from one outlet (when that pit is full) to the other (so that this is used for filling)?
· Can hands be washed with water and soap or ashes?
Use by the whole family is important. If half the population does not use the toilet, open defecation will continue. In the fields, people can adopt the cat method (digging a hole, squatting over it to deposit the excreta in the hole and then covering them with soil. (See also the second picture in the toilet ladder).
7) Lack of space
For households that lack space it is sometimes possible to build one latrine between 2-4 households for sharing. It is also sometimes possible to build individual latrines back-to-back and/or side-to-side. They then take less space and are cheaper than when they are built as stand-alone toilets.
If there is no space at all, it is sometimes possible to build a row of toilets in a public place close to where people without toilets live. One option is to build a row of individual toilets, each of which is used and maintained by one or a few families. When the toilets are locked and only the user households have the key, it is possible to keep them nice and clean. Before starting their use it is good to make arrangements and put in writing what each family will do to keep the toilet clean and in good repair and how they will share the use (including by young children in the families).
If there is no possibility to build shared household toilets, it may be possible to construct a group-managed bathhouse with one or more toilet(s). The bathhouse usually consists of:
· a tap with a water reservoir and/or a handpump (either as main water source or as stand-by when the piped system doesn’t work);
· some cubicles for taking a bucket bath (wetting yourself by throwing some water from the bucket over you, then applying soap and then rinsing of the lather);
· one or more toilets;
· a small office where the users pay per visit and where they sometimes get some liquid or powdered soap.
Sometimes there is also a scrubbing board and rinsing trough for clothes washing.
8) Washing hands
Very important for the health benefits of toilets are also that people wash their hands after going for defecation, before preparing and eating food and after cleaning up the baby’s stool and cleaning his/her bottom.
You can create more awareness about how bits of stools from one person can be eaten by him/her or someone else by doing a nice participatory activity (the Six F’s Diagram). You can do it with groups in any open space. You can also teach young people to do the activity with village groups. You need the following materials:
· A pile of pebbles that you explain will represent a stool,
· A piece of fruit or vegetable representing food grown in a field,
· A cup of water representing a flow of water,
· A plate or bowl with some food representing food eaten in the home
· Three pieces of paper, one with a drawing of a fly, one with a drawing of a hand with five fingers, and the third with a drawing of a person (this can be a simply a round for the head, and lines for the body, arms and legs),
· Pieces of string to interconnect the items.
To start you can ask the group if they like to eat particles of human stools (‘shit’). People will usually deny this strongly. You then explain that the purpose of the activity is to show that it can easily happen that people will eat excreta!
Ask the group to put the pebbles representing the stool in one spot. Now ask them to place the cup of water at some distance from the stool. Can the stool end up in the water? When does this happen? (Examples: flooding, drainage, irrigation). Ask the group to put a piece of string between the stool and the cup to visualise the linkage.
Now ask what can happen when a fly sits on the stool and then flies to the house. Where can he sit and bring very small pieces of shit to these new places in such a way that the shit can be eaten? (Example: flies sit on the stool and then on the fruit or vegetable: place a sting between the stool, the fly and the fruit/vegetable. Another example: flies sit on the stool and then on the plate or bowl of food: place a sting between the stool, the fly and the plate/bowl. A third example: flies sit on the stool and then on a child’s mouth: place a string between the stool, the fly and the mouth on the drawing of the person). Stimulate people to think of more links and help them to put them in.
Now consider the fingers: how can bits of ‘shit’ get onto a hand and then be eaten? Think of: wiping your bottom, then preparing or eating food, a child touching his/her stool and then sucking his/her fingers, and so on).
In the end, help people review in how many ways bits of stools from one person can end up in his/her mounth or in the mouth of other people…..
In this way people can come to understand the importance of toilets and hygiene:
(1) Everyone has and uses latrines, so that stools do not get into water (streams, irrigation canals) and then onto crops, or swallowed by people drinking this water or boys when swimming and flies cannot sit on them anymore;
(2) Everyone washes hands with soap or ash and water at the critical times (four important occasions, see above) so that no small bits of stools may be swallowed after getting onto people’s hands.
9) Operation of a bathhouse
Operation of the bathhouse can be by a paid person, for example a poor single woman from the community who needs to have paid work close to her home and will be very motivated to do a good job. This person will clean toilets and bathroom after each use, and take and register the payments. Payments are usually per visit, but there are also communities where the user families pay a fixed weekly or monthly fee for using the bathhouse. It may then not be necessary to have a daily operator, but an agreement on rules of use and regular visits to check adherence an clean the bathhouse will be needed. Any agreement should also look into use (including free or paid use) by children, as part of becoming a total sanitation village. Operation can also be done by women and men from the user households themselves on a roster basis. A user committee can be established to prepare rules, check proper use, do the overall bookkeeping and account for operation, use, maintenance and management to the users and supporters of the facility.
10) Helping people who cannot construct latrines
Every family can build a simple toilet. They can dig the pit themselves and if necessary themselves line the pit and make a slab over it from poles covered with a firm mixture of clay, cow dung and ashes. However, these toilets are not very durable and they are not so easy to keep clean.
Moreover, some people cannot do the construction themselves, for example because they are old, handicapped or chronically ill. Single women also find it sometimes difficult to build a toilet. There may also be people who are too poor to pay for materials that are no longer free, such as poles for slabs and outhouses or grass for roofs, or cannot pay for bought materials such as a concrete slab.
In such cases, the other families in the community may decide to help such families, to achieve total sanitation.
A nice group activity to determine who in the community are too poor to build their own latrine is the ‘welfare assessment and social mapping’.
You will need the following materials:
· three sheets of white paper to draw three types of families
· a large sheet for making the village map
· felt tipped pens in different colours for the drawing
Ask the group to form three sub-groups. Ask each group to make a drawing of a family:
Group 1: a family that has been very fortunate in life
Group 2: a family that has been very unfortunate in life
Group 3: an in-between family
After the groups have made their drawings they present their ‘families’ to each other. It is then decided which colour or shape is used for each type of family when drawing their houses in the ‘social map’.
For the ‘social map’, you ask the group to draw a map of the village with its houses, institutes and physical infrastructure. This is best done by starting with a central house or building such as the temple, school etc. The group then draws the house of the families living in front, to the back and on both sides of the building, using the agreed colour or form designating their position in life. The group goes on until all houses in the village have been drawn. The group also puts a small square behind every house that has a toilet.
When the map is ready, it is possible to see how many of the families without a toilet belong to the ‘unfortunate in life’ group, and how many belong to the two other groups. It can then be discussed (also in a larger village assembly) if the unfortunate families should get any help from the other households or from the Panchayat to construct a toilet.
The ‘social map’ is also a good instrument to monitor which families in each of the three welfare groups have built toilets earlier, which ones are building one now, and which ones need more encouragement to build a toilet. To this purpose, any new latrines are added onto the map and a record is kept for each month (or perhaps every three months) on how many new toilets have been built by the three welfare groups without a toilet.
TYPES OF TOILETS
1. Cat method. This is the simplest safe ‘toilet’. Dig a hole, sit over it to relief yourself and cover your excreta afterwards. Carry a small jar with water and if possible, some soap to wash yourself (if that is your custom) and your hands afterwards. If no soap, use some (clean) soil, or rub your hand firmly while rinsing it.
2. Pit latrine. This is a simple slab placed over a dug hole. The slab can be made of sticks plastered with a mixture of clay, dung and ashes. It can also be of cast concrete/ferro cement. If wanted, you can mix in colouring powder or paint the grey slab with cement paint, to make it look more cheerful. If the soil is unstable, the pit must be lined. This can be done with less or more permanent materials. The sides can be fully covered, so that the liquid soaks away through the bottom, or with a honeycomb brickwork (that is bricks laid with small openings between them) for sideway leakage.
The superstructure can be very simple and makeshift (a frame with reeds or jute, for example) or made from more durable materials. After the pit has become full, it must be emptied or covered and a new toilet built. When covered, you can plant a fruit- or timber tree in the hole after some time, to use the excreta as fertilizer. Pit latrines do not need flushing water, so they are good for a dry area and when water sources are far. Use a fly cover to keep flies from breeding in the toilet, and have water and soap near for washing hands. Throwing ashes in the pit also helps to keep flies out.
3. Sanplat pit latrine. This is the same as no. 2, except that the shape of the slap is concave. This has as advantage that less cement is needed (1/2 bag/slab) and that the slab is very strong. Cleaning water also runs off more easily. The slab is round in size and reinforced by some iron rods. You need an (iron) mould to cast it. Line the pit if needed. When the toilet is full, you can dig a new pit and shift the sanplat over it.
4. VIP (Ventilated Improved Pit) latrine. This is the same as no. 2 or 3, but it has ventilation piped at the back. The ventilation pipe is connected to the pit, and runs at the outside of the toilet hut, so that the sun can warm it. It has a fly screen on top. The toilet has to be dark inside, so must have a permanent superstructure made from clay, sun-dried bricks, bakes bricks or building blocks, and have a roof and a door or dark curtain. The roof can be made of any material. When the pipe heats up, a draught develops and any flies that sit in the toilet are sucked up in the pipe. At the end, the screen stops them from flying away. They fall back into the pit, fly up a gain, and so on, until they are dead from exhaustion. VIP toilets do not need water collection for flushing.
5. Pour-flush toilet. This toilet has a slab with a ceramic pan in it. After relieving yourself, you pour some water in the pan to flush away the contents. Note that the ‘rural pan’ is a steeper model that needs LESS water. There are now plastic pans that cost Rs. Polypropylene toilet pans called ‘EASYFLUSH’ costs less than Rs. 60. See the attached press clipping. The toilet may be build over one pit, but it can also have a double pit. The double pit toilet has the advantage that when the first pit is full, the family can switch to use the second pit. While they use the second pit, the contents of the first pit become very fertile compost. When the second pit is full, the first pit’s contents have become compost. The compost can simply be dug out and used for horticulture, ornamental plants etc.
6. Urine diversion toilet. Human urine is a very good and totally safe free fertilizer! The simplest way is for women and children to urinate over a bucket, or for men to urinate into a funnel placed in a jar or jerry can. You then mix the urine with an equal amount of water and pour it around your plants. You use the toilet only for stools. The advantage of this is that the latrine will smell less (the bad smell comes from urine being mixed with stools) and will compost faster. You therefore need a less deep pit as you can take out the contents faster. However, to dig out the compost, you must switch to using a second pit (e.g. in the double vault toilet, or build a second dry pit toilet) so that the stools in the first pit have time for becoming compost. This can take about 3-6 months, depending on your diet. Stools from vegetarians digest quicker than stools from non-vegetarians, as the first are totally organic.
7. Ecological sanitation (Ecosan) toilet. This is the second toilet from the top. It has a box above the ground, which is divided into two halves. Each half has a special urine diversion pan placed above it (You can see two pans in the drawing). The urine diversion pan has a small hole in the front. Through this hole, the urine and washing water seep away through a hose that ends at a tree or any other type of plant that you want to fertilise. The back hole is for the stools, which drop into the half of the box under it. After six months, you stop using this part of the toilet and start using the other part. When you have done this for six months, the contents of the first part have become compost. They can be removed through a door at the back of the box and used for gardening. You can then start using this part of the toilet again and let the content of the other half become compost.
8. The toilet of the top of the ladder has a septic tank. This is an expensive model, which is not recommended for rural areas. Type 7, the ecosan toilet is also somewhat costly, but it also saves a lot of money as it produces free fertilizers.
BACKGROUND MATERIALS
- Smart sanitation solutions
This publication gives examples of low-cost household and community-based sanitation solutions that have proven effective and affordable. It illustrates a range of innovative technologies for toilets, collection, transportation, treatment and use of sanitation products that have already helped thousands of poor families to improve their lives.
Low resolution version, but still 1.6 MB! Is available at http://www.irc.nl/redir/content/download/24282/273405/file/SSS_2006.pdf
A high resolution version (5 MB) at http://www.irc.nl/redir/content/download/27526/293434/file/SSS_2006hr.pdf
- Sanitation ladder. Seven drawings indicating the types of toilets to choose from. From low-cost options to higher cost options. Source: COSI Foundation for Technical Cooperation, Sri Lanka. It can be used as training material in discussions on technology selection.
(This response is provided by WELL, a DFID funded resource centre aiming to improve access to information and provide support in water, sanitation and environmental health. The views expressed are not necessarily those of DFID.)
