Water, Sanitation and Hygiene – Page 3

Ten Frontier Technologies for International Development (IDS report 2016)

November 5, 2016

As new technologies and digital business models reshape economies and disrupt incumbencies, interest has surged in the potential of novel frontier technologies to also contribute to positive changes in international development and humanitarian contexts. Widespread adoption of new technologies is acknowledged as centrally important to achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.

But while frontier technologies can rapidly address large-scale economic, social or political challenges, they can also involve the displacement of existing technologies and carry considerable uncertainty and risk. Although there have been significant wins bringing the benefits of new technologies to poor consumers through examples such as mobile money or off-grid solar energy, there are many other areas where the applications may not yet have been developed into viable market solutions, or where opportunities have not yet been taken up in development practice.

Against this background, the Department for International Development (DFID) commissioned the Digital and Technology Research Group at the Institute of Development Studies to undertake a review of frontier technologies in five key areas.

What drives behavior? Key factors for handwashing in Bangladesh (Alive & Thrive Case Study 2015)

November 5, 2016

Designed for practitioners, trainers, and students of behavior change or social marketing, this case study shows how to take the guesswork out of two critical decisions:

What behavior will you promote?
What key factors will you address to motivate people?

Use the case study kit to teach or learn about methods for behavior change and view A&T’s final TV spot on handwashing + child feeding.

Click here for full details.

Handwashing with Soap Toolkit (WSP 2014)

October 16, 2016

Improving handwashing with soap practices can save children’s lives by reducing preventable diseases like diarrhea and acute respiratory infections. Despite its effectiveness in reducing disease, handwashing with soap is uncommon in many countries. The Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) conducted research with local partners in Peru, Senegal, Tanzania, and Vietnam to understand the factors that affect an individual’s decision to practice handwashing with soap. The research informed the implementation of handwashing project activities in the four countries. Following national and local government implementation, WSP and its partners gathered valuable lessons, which inform this handwashing with soap toolkit. The toolkit, intended for practitioners interested in behavior change, is organized into four modules, each with reports and presentations about the lessons learned from the projects, as well as mass media, direct consumer contact, and interpersonal communication tools used throughout the project.

Click here for full toolkit.

Strengthening behaviour change communication in western Nepal: how can we do better? (Waterlines 34:4 article 2015)

October 2, 2016

The Government of Nepal aims to achieve full water and sanitation coverage by 2017. The bilateral Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Project in Western Nepal (RWSSP-WN) works with local governments in 14 districts, aiming to declare them open defecation free. This behaviour change communications evaluation explored how to improve RWSSP-WN’s present practices to reach the diverse target population in the Terai districts, where more than 1 million people still defecate in the open.

The study reviewed RWSSP-WN’s present behaviour change triggering tools and related communications strategies. The findings suggest that availability of subsidies seems to change how people think about sanitation and tends to eliminate willingness to pay for a latrine. The authors recommended strong advocacy for a no-subsidy policy, and more attention paid to alternative financing options with targeted support to the poorest of the poor.

The present behaviour change triggering tools do work as intended, but there is a need to develop pre-triggering and post-triggering strategies to increase the overall impact. The pre-triggering strategy would ensure that potential barriers to change are identified and addressed before the actual triggering event, and that the key stakeholders are prepared for the actual triggering event. The post-triggering strategy is needed to continue motivating households to change via messages that tap into the drivers of change, addressing also the barriers which may keep each household from changing behaviour. This paper provides a number of recommendations applicable for those working with local governments and communities to increase the scope and scale of behaviour change triggering.

Can behaviour change approaches improve the cleanliness and functionality of shared toilets? A randomised control trial in Dhaka, Bangladesh (WSUP Discussion Paper 2016)

May 21, 2016

Households living in densely populated urban slums often lack the space for their own toilet, making shared sanitation the only viable solution. This is the situation in Dhaka, where many of the city’s low-income residents depend on one of the city’s enormous number of shared compound toilets: a recent study by the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research Bangladesh (icddr,b) estimated that 4.3 million people in Dhaka use such facilities. While shared compound toilets can play a central role in urban sanitation provision, it is notoriously difficult to keep these facilities clean and well-maintained, leading to an unhygienic and unpleasant user experience and often to under-use or eventual abandonment.

As part of its 2012 – 2015 DFID-funded research programme, WSUP commissioned a research project in Dhaka to explore behaviour change strategies to help users keep their toilets clean and functional. The study aimed to design, pilot and rollout low-cost behaviour change messaging approaches and associated simple hardware provision. The research team used a randomised control trial (RCT) design to evaluate the impact of the intervention on toilet cleanliness and other metrics. The results indicate that this type of behaviour change approach can be strongly beneficial to shared toilet cleanliness and functionality.

This Discussion Paper presents the context, methodology, results and conclusions of the study. The paper is derived from the final report of researchers from icddr,b, Stanford University and Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Click here for full details.