Day 5: 19Th November 2010 - World Toilet Day

Day 5: 19th November 2010 - World Toilet Day

Petra, IDS, UK

Happy World Toilet Day! It's great that our workshop ends on such an important day! This morning we finally concluded the discussions around the wording and content of our statement. We are just putting some final touches on it now, then we will share it here on the site as one of our contributions to World Toilet Day and an output from the workshop that people can take back to their countries, circulate in their organisations and networks and us for policy and advocacy purposes! Just now we did our little World Toilet Day stunt, which I will post soon- a fun video clip! Will add the link to it in the blog once it's up, too!

Now some discussions on issues that participants feel we have not yet covered sufficiently and sharing of examples of good practice, for example on monitoring and evaluation. Later we will talk about ways forward, personal commitments and follow up. This includes issues of documentation, research (what do we need to know), networking, messages from us to the Mali workshop and also a discussion about how we want to represent CLTS at AfricaSan in Rwanda next year. IDS is planning to do a workshop (as is our tradition at these conferences) for sharing and learning, and, if possible, also hold one or two sessions at the main conference. We hope that many of the people and organisations represented at the two regional workshops in Mali and Zambia can help bring CLTS messages to the conference.

Here are the Statement and Recommendations and here is the video

Sharon, Plan Netherlands Today is the last day of the workshop and it is also World Toilet Day! After an energizing start with Leonard, which ended in a canon with all of us chanting: “To whom does shit belong to? To us!”, we prepared for our input for World Toilet Day. A day to celebrate the importance of sanitation and raise awareness for the 2.6 billion people (nearly half of the world’s population), who don’t have access to toilets and proper sanitation. We ended up doing a small ODF-celebration with all of us forming and shouting the letters O, D and F. We made a video of it and this will be published on the internet. Now we are in to the last bit of the workshop. Yesterday we drafted up the beginning of a statement on key issues in CLTS and some recommendations which we will share nationally and internationally. After some fruitful and even a couple of heated discussions we just finalized the document and this will be published today as well. So now were are discussing issues which we did not have time to discuss before, like monitoring and the sharing of good practices. There is always so much to talk about and yet so little time….It is good to know that some of the issues raised and discussed will continue in the Mali workshop being held one week from now.

Jolly Ann, EWB Canada, Malawi Happy World Toilet Day! We started off the day by creating a video for the event, check it out on this website or on youtube, it was pretty fun to make! We then discussed a few of the emerging issues, including M&E, management structures, and innovations in latrine technology. The Kenya delegates had an impressive banner which displayed their innovations; the one for sandy areas will be most useful for our districts near Lake Malawi. The rest of the day each country made action plans based on their learning from the workshop and on our country recommendations. The one that stood out for me was Eritrea’s plan to stop triggering villages until they’ve made the ones they’ve currently triggered ODF, it’s really a commendable goal and I wish them the best of luck with it! I’m going to try to influence our partners in Malawi to think about adopting this goal as their own and really work towards achieving ODF in the previously triggered villages. Overall, great workshop, lots of lessons learned from all countries involved, and lots of professional and personal connections made with people passionate about CLTS! I really hope to be able to see some of the participants again in the near future!

Sharon, Plan Netherlands Now that the workshop has nearly come to an end, we actually can’t wait to take all the experiences we have learned home and start work again! So all of us started drafting up our own Country Action Plan on the issues we are going to pick up as soon as we are in the office and behind our desks. Nearly everyone will share the experiences learned with the different stakeholders in their respective countries. Other issues mentioned are: the concept of sanitation marketing, looking for public private partnerships, advocacy and lobby, monitoring and evaluation, and many more. After the workshop we will have a small farewell-party and then we will all go our separate ways. Although…through all the things we shared I think “separate” might not be the good word for it…..