Last Wednesday, we had our project kickoff. We had about fifteen people from many different organizations: World Bank Water & Sanitation Program, Ministry of Rural Development (MRD), Future Cambodia Fund, LienAid, GRET, Rainwater Cambodia. . . Mike (from IDE) gave an intro to the project and the Demand Assessment and Supply Chain work that IDE has already done. I gave a short intro to IDEO and then we did a few activities. I had everyone do a braindump on who in Cambodia is doing anything regarding sanitation, with specific emphasis on folks doing stuff related to latrine design. I’ve since followed up with a number of those people and have had or will have meetings with them to learn what they’re up to.
We also talked a lot about Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS)—an intensive outreach program originated in Bangladesh that attempts to achieve open defecation free villages purely through education about the positive impact of proper sanitation. To learn more, check out this video. They’ve had great success there, and the MRD has had pretty good success here in Cambodia in its first three years of the effort. CLTS doesn’t advocate for any particular latrine design, and one flaw in the program as experienced by MRD is that the majority of participants tend to build simple dry-pit latrines (a hole in the ground with a wood or bamboo slab over it). These have been collapsing during the wet season due to soil instability, which leaves people without a latrine in the wet season and forces them to redig the pit every dry season—neither of which is good. Seems that even with the simplest of latrines, some reinforcement of the pit will be required.
We then did a quick brainstorming exercise to draw out everyone’s initial ideas of what the final solution will be. There were some great ideas that I’m sure will stick with us to the end.
Finally, we got commitment from a core team that will work with me more intensely thought the project: Chhoeurn (MRD), Savath (IDE), Satya (IDE), Sopheak (LienAid) and Hengly (Rainwater Cambodia). None are engineers, none are designers, none are ethnographers!!! But they are all eager to learn and to work on solving this problem. Should be fun.
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