SEED Madagascar

Sticking with Sanitation: Combatting slippage in open defecation free communities 

Madagascar is plagued by the third worst water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) conditions in the world¹. Just 12% of people have access to basic sanitation and consequently 42%² of the population practice open defecation³. Over the past year and a half, SEED, together with UNICEF, has been using a community-led total sanitation (CLTS) approach to improve access to WASH facilities for over 10,000 people. The CLTS approach encourages communities to create and take ownership of their own sanitation action plans and build their own facilities. After great success with the first phase of the project, which saw a 40% decline in households practicing open defecation, SEED is now in the second stage of this WASH project, working to prevent a return to open defecation. This regression to unsanitary practices is known as “slippage”. For this week’s blog, we spoke to Mamitiana Harinandrasana, the Regional Coordinator of the Rural WASH Programme, and to some of his team, to learn more about the project and discuss the importance of maintaining ODF status and the challenge of slippage. 

Mamitiana started working with SEED in 2014 on Project Malio, a WASH project providing sanitation in the town of Fort Dauphin. He is now Regional Coordinator of SEED’s Rural WASH project and so is highly experienced in working with communities to combat open defecation.  Mamitiana explained that ‘being ODF’ is not just about the elimination of open defecation zones in the community, but a wider understanding within the community about the importance of creating basic sanitation infrastructure and having structures in place to maintain ODF practices

“ODF means the communities are conscious of the importance of having improved latrines [and] having measures and organisations established to automatically warn of those who aren’t following suit.”

The CLTS approach used in the Rural WASH programme mobilises whole communities to eliminate open defecation. NGOs simply building toilets is not enough to improve sanitation and hygiene. Instead, behaviour change is needed to ensure sustainable, lasting improvements. This requires the investment of the whole community and the understanding that if even a few people continue to openly defecate, this places everyone at risk of disease. Local WASH committees are set up and run by local community leaders, drawing on established consensus to encourage and promote sanitary practices in rural households. Mamitiana and his team help communities to examine their own sanitation practices and consequently assist local WASH committees to take action to become ODF⁴. In this process, individual households are encouraged to build basic latrines and handwashing stations, whilst the practice of open defecation is established to be harmful and unhygienic. Put succinctly,

“The community officers form monitoring committees to promote respect for sanitation and hygiene within communities.”

While the villages Mamitiana and his team worked with achieved ODF status at the end of the first phase of the project, after a month without external support, many of the settlements experienced some slippage. Mamitiana explained that people started returning to defecate in zones that had previously been sanitized. This could be due to a lack of monitoring of the newly established measures put in place by the sanitation committees.

Aubin and Sylvia are two of the team working to provide support and coaching for communities to implement their sanitation action plans, and they gave some insight into how slippage has affected the communities they work with. Sylvia told us,

“At the end of June all of the villages with which I work were ODF but afterwards, during the month of July, the activities did not continue. Additionally, the household latrines were constructed with wood and clay and the soil is sandy, so during the rainy period almost all of the latrines were full or damaged.”

Aubin and Sylvia will be providing coaching to help communities develop and implement action plans. Alongside this, they will be reengaging the monitoring committees and local authorities to ensure community-wide behaviour change, with continuous follow-ups to maintain ODF. In all this planning, Mamitiana highlighted the role of the local community remains key.

“The communities with which we work are affected by slippage because many thought that after constructing their own latrine, everything was finished. It’s easy to forget that the maintenance and improvement of latrines at a household level is needed to maintain ODF status.”

In the new phase of the Rural WASH Programme, Mamitiana and his team are working to support communities to return to ODF status and prevent slippage from happening again in the future.  To achieve this, Mamitiana said that

“The duty of the local WASH governance committees is to prioritise the needs of the community in terms of health, economy, and socio-cultural aspects. So, to support them, we must revitalise them as much as possible through community meetings, increase participatory monitoring and evaluation, involving all the stakeholders and have everyone accept the constitution of local government.”

SEED is supporting over 1,000 communities in Anosy to continue to maintain and improve upon the amazing progress they have already achieved. Thanks to the work of Mamitiana and his team, we are looking forward to seeing the development of sustainable long-term sanitation and hygiene practices in southeast Madagascar.

1. UNICEF Madagascar (2018). Challenges and Opportunities for Children in Madagascar.
Available from:
https://www.unicef.org/madagascar/media/1246/file/Defis%20et%20opportunites%20des
%20enfants%20%C3%A0%20Madagascar%20(EN).pdf [Accessed 24th September 2021]
2. JMP UNICEF/WHO. Washdata.org. Available from:
https://washdata.org/data/household#!/dashboard/new [Accessed 24th September 2021]
3. The World Bank. People practicing open defecation (% of population) – Madagascar.
Available from: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.STA.ODFC.ZS?locations=MG
[Accessed 24th September 2021]
4. CLTS Knowledge Hub. The CLTS Approach. Available from:
https://www.communityledtotalsanitation.org/page/clts-approach [Accessed 27th
September 2021]