Community Planning for Wastewater Management in Low Income Communities

Title: Community Planning for Wastewater Management in Low Income Communities

Authors: Keerthi Sri Wijesinghe (COSI), Prabha Gunawardena (COSI),

This paper discusses the Findings and Learning’s of WASPA (Asia) Project, which is funded by the European Commission under its Asia Pro Eco II Program.

WASPA Asia aims to involve a wide range of stakeholders in developing and testing solutions for sanitation and decentralized wastewater management, and mitigation of health risks from wastewater use in agriculture.

Abstract

Although findings from participatory planning of sanitation interventions have consistently mentioned the importance of community involvement to ensure sustainability, there is still inadequate practical knowledge of the approaches to take and the process by which this is to occur. Research from a low income community in Kurunegala, Sri Lanka illustrates the importance of building the capacity and ownership of the community to address their sanitation problems. Lessons from this action research conducted by COSI with a community based organization (CBO) shows that training to build skills in good organizational practices, including planning and financial management, had an extremely positive impact on latrine construction, water supply initiatives and hygiene practices. Transparency and inclusion were stressed in the planning and efforts were made to include all groups and to keep dialogue open with the wider community. This diffused tensions, for example when the CBO was accused of misusing funds. The work also highlighted the groups within a community that are more likely to become physically involved in building, which provides lessons on how to include non-participative groups. It also showed the disruptive behaviour of individuals both within and outside the community. To address the hygiene issues the COSI team and the CBO mobilized smaller groups of women and children, with whom they undertook a number of educational activities and follow-up monitoring. The results showed that most of the children are aware of good hygiene practice but that they are not practicing what they know – games that highlighted their lack of daily hygienic practices had some positive results in changing this. Women who slipped back into unhygienic practices could be much more easily convinced to take them up again because of their increased knowledge and discussions in their small groups. The knowledge and lessons from this work are useful for NGOs and other practitioners implementing community-based participatory plans of sanitation initiatives interested in practical examples of approaches to strengthen CBOs and win the approval of communities to ensure sustainable interventions.