Low cost toilet promotion

Still more than 50 per cent of people in Nepal defecate in the open.

When asked why they hadn’t built a toilet, people blamed financial constraints.

That is because people think only about costly cemented toilet blocks – even though their houses are built using straw, timber and mud. People think they need a corrugated galvanized iron roof for a toilet, even though they are living under hay roofs. They are not aware of low cost options for toilets.

Normally, the cost of simple toilet up to pan level or sub structure is around NPR 3,000 (£23). Actually, the part which increases toilet cost, discouraging poor people towards building toilet, is types of costly structures. That is why when working with communities to improve sanitation, Practical Action promote a ’7 B’ approach while constructing low cost toilets. 7 B stands for the 7 different toilet structures that can be built with locally available materials:

Bamboo

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bag (Jute or plastic bags)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bush (Hay)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bricks

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Boulders (stone masonry)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blocks

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blend (mixture of two or more materials)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The core concept of reducing the cost is the use of locally available resources, including material and human resource. It also ensures ownership, sustainability and easy promotion. The other main concept is to ensure people get into the habit of using the toilet. Improving the condition of toilet then comes in the second phase.

Among the 7B options, normally bricks, blocks and boulders are more expensive. However, it is not always true. First class brick is not required for building toilets; it can be built with second class or even built with brick bats. Blocks with higher cement sand ratio can be used for making toilets cheaper. Also, if boulders are locally available, it can also be a cheaper option.

You can find more information about the work we do in Nepal here and on water and sanitation here.

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Proud to be ODF

If you’re squeamish about poo, look away now! Open defecation is not something people in the developed world have to think about. But for many of the poorest people living in developing countries, open defecation is not an unusual sight – 1.1 billion people defecate in the open.

The health implications are huge. More than 2 million children die each year from diarrhoea and millions more suffer poor health as a result of poor sanitation.

Over the last three years, Practical Action has been working with communities in Nepal addressing problems to improve sanitation and health. An important part of this project has been to help communities become Open Defecation Free (ODF).

Nepal’s Sanitation Plan has a comprehensive list of points, to be met by a community, to achieve ODF status:

• Proper use of toilets with access to water;
• Hand washing with soap or cleaning agent at critical times(before eating, feeding children, cooking and serving food, after use of toilet
• Safe handling and treatment of drinking water
• Maintenance of personal hygiene (regular nail cutting, bathing, cloth washing, tooth brushing);
• Proper solid and liquid waste management (Availability of bins/pits to collect/dispose solid waste) in and out of the home;
• All households should have toilet and hand washing facilities such as soap, washing platform;
• Availability of brush or brooms or cleaning agent, etc. at the toilet;
• Covering food and water;
• Regular cleaning of rooms, yards, and household compound;
• Availability of managed animal shed and covered waste water pit
• Availability of improved cooking stove/bio‐gas and improved kitchen management;
• All public institutions should have users‐friendly clean, hygienic toilets with hand washing and proper waste management facilities;
• Social map showing toilet; and community committee message/slogan for healthy community

I recently joined a group comprising media persons and other stake holders including local government officials to Sharadanagar, an emerging Village Development Committee to see if Sharadanagar met the criteria to be declared an ODF community or not.

As soon as we reached the venue I jumped off the bus and started scouring Sharadanagar hoping to find waste. But I had never seen such a clean community. All the houses were clean, small or big, thatched or brick. Each and every house had a toilet, not just a toilet but every house had a clean kitchen with kitchen racks and clean dishwashing areas. I had no idea what it takes for a community to be declared an ODF until I saw the list which each and every visitor was keen on checking.

The list is pretty long but at the end of the tour the visitors agreed that Sharadanagar indeed meets all the criteria. I certainly agreed and I know that in no time Sharadanagar will be declared ODF. This is a huge step forward and a source of pride to the whole community.

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Providing better health services for waste workers

Large numbers of people in the developing world rely on other people’s waste to make a living. In the Kathmandu valley of Nepal nearly 15,000 people work as waste pickers and 800 more deal in scrap. These are the poorest of the poor, many are women and they suffer discrimination through social exclusion, religious segregation and political marginalisation. Often they have started this work as children and their lack of education, poor health care and low status leaves them vulnerable with few opportunities to improve their lives.

One of Practical Action’s projects in this area aims to improve the living conditions of these workers and to secure them better social protection. One of the initiatives of this project was a health camp in Sundarighat in the Lalitpur District of Nepal, to raise awareness of health and hygiene issues and to provide general health check-ups.

There was a worrying start to the event for Dr. Bishnu Acharya and his assisting staff nurse as initially very few workers came along and those that did were reluctant to share their health problems. One of the health team noticed a group of women chatting by themselves, so she joined their group and started sharing her own experience of pregnancy. Slowly the women opened up and began to tell their own stories and soon they were persuaded to agree to an antenatal check-up and were given information on nutrition and hygiene.

From then on, everything went smoothly and more and more workers arrived. Many of the women also wanted the doctor to check their children and were enquiring about vaccinations. Each person was helped to complete a health questionnaire and it was a relief to learn that none of the waste workers suffered from major illnesses. The most common health problem encountered was worms. Dr. Acharya emphasised the need of deworming each and every patient. A couple of women had high blood pressure and were advised to consume less salt and fried foods.

Practical Action’s team has put together a check list of what should be provided when running such health days:

1. A comprehensive list of available over the counter medicines
2. Plenty of deworming medicine
3. Vitamin supplements (especially Vitamin B complex) as many of the expectant mothers lack a balanced diet
4. Rehydration salts
5. Contraceptive advice and condoms
6. All free government vaccinations, including polio, for newborns and children

The success of the day ensured that it will be repeated and on the next occasion it will be organised in collaboration with government local health staff. Information to be provided will include a health and hygiene video and government illustrated booklets on safe sex and contraception and basic health issues.

The medical staff learned a great deal about communicating with people who have little experience of health services. They are now better able to put people at ease so as to extract the patient’s medical history, which is vital for a correct diagnosis and treatment.

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Ecological sanitation for sustainable sanitation

2.6 billion people in the world do not have access to improved sanitation facilities. Most of them are from South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.

In the race of accessing the facilities, a lot of pit latrines or improved pit latrine have been constructed behind they are cheaper ,thus easy to promote in low income areas. However, there remains a high potential risk of contaminating the ground water which is source of drinking water for millions.

Practical Action Nepal is therefore promoting ecological sanitation (ECOSAN) toilets in its EC supported project, Strengthening Water, Air, Sanitation and Hygiene Treasuring Health (SWASHTHA). The project is taking place in 21 communities targeting urban poor of four municipalities (Bharatpur, Butwal, Gulariya and Tikapur) in Nepal. The primary objectives of promoting ECOSAN toilets are:

1. Reducing the health risks related to sanitation, contaminated water and waste

2. Improving the quality of surface and groundwater

3. Improving soil fertility

4. Optimising the management of nutrients and water resources

The collection system of ECOSAN toilet is different with the other conventional and modern flush cistern toilet. In this toilet, faeces and urine is collected separately.

Nutrients in the urine are easily assimilated by plants and vegetables. However, the urine is diluted by adding water so it doesn’t burn the vegetation.

Similarly, faeces contains nutrients but there is a high risk of the presence of pathogens. Therefore, faeces can not be used directly as urine. Elimination of harmful pathogens in the faeces can be achieved by dehydration. That is why the importance of diverting the urine is dominant here. The entire process of dehydration of faeces takes about six months to one year. Then it can be used as compost.

It was believed traditionally that faeces has more nutrient value. However, the analysis of urine and faeces reveals that urine has significantly more nutrients than faeces. Urine is rich in nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium and can be used in agriculture as well as horticulture. The amount of urine collected from one person during one day is sufficient to fertilize one square metre of land. Urine collected from 30 persons for one year is sufficient to fertilize one hectare of land.

Description	Unit	Urine	Faeces
Volume	Litre per person per day	1.4	0.15
Nitrogen	Gram per person per day	11	1.5
Phosphorus	Gram per person per day	1	0.5
Volume	Litre per person per year	500	56

Advantages of ECOSAN:

1.It requires less water than in the flush cistern toilet, where flushing is necessary after each urination and defecation.

2.It does not contribute to pollution. Both urine and human faeces are collected safely. It pollutes neither surface water nor ground water.

3.Separately collected urine and human faeces can be used as natural fertilizer. These natural fertilizers can be easily assimilated by the plants.

4.Improvement of health due to safe and hygienic sanitation.

There are a few limitations in promoting ECOSAN, however:

1.Users need to be aware how to use ECOSAN toilets. Faeces needs to be kept dry as far as possible.

2.People have to handle faeces. Therefore, people need to be educated that faeces is not waste but is a useful resource. Further, people need to be aware of using the compost of faeces and the proper use of urine.

3.The faeces compost needs to be handled carefully for health reasons.

4.There is a cultural barrier in terms of handling human waste

Material cost of an ECOSAN Toilet up to plinth level or pan level is about 8000 rupees (£64). The structure of the toilet can be built with locally available materials like bamboo, wood, boulders, mud etc.

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Making markets work for the poor

I returned from a visit to our Nepal programme last week and so thought I’d use my next couple of blogs to provide some news from there.

In a previous blog I have talked about our work with dairy farmers in Nepal – helping small farmers increase milk yields through improved animal health and nutrition. In Nepal there is, in theory, a huge opportunity for small farmers to earn income from milk sales as there is a national ‘milk deficit’ with very large quantities of both fresh and powdered milk being imported from India to meet the demand of urban centres.

For increased yields of milk to lead to higher incomes for farmers however, improved technology and technical knowledge is only part of the changes that have to occur. The technical side of ensuring access to improved feedstock, the services of vets, cooling facilities to allow milk from lots of small farms to be bulked up and stored until collection by dairy processors etc is all very important. But often there are other problems in the way market chains work which can prevent small producers from realising the potential value of their produce. That is why Practical Action works not just on the technology but also on making markets work for poor people.

I saw an example of the latter on my first day in Kathmandu, when I attended a seminar on barriers to small holder farmers’ engagement in the dairy market, hosted by Practical Action. It was held under the auspicies of a Practical Action dairy project (funded by UK AID) and was part of the process of bringing key market actors from across the dairy market chain together to discuss policy blockages to further expansion of smallholder dairy production. The seminar was attended by about 100 people including small farmers, private sector dairy processors and government officials. The latter included the Minister for Agriculture, the Permanent Secretary for the Ministry of Agriculture and the Director General of the Livestock Department of the Ministry of Agriculture. A representative of the UK’s Department for International Develoment was also present as a speaker.

The workshop was good evidence of our Nepal office’s convening power, in this case bringing together and facilitating discussion amongst the whole range of different players that make up the dairy market chain in Nepal. The first part of the morning included speeches by the main guests and a key note speech identifying some of the main problems in the dairy market chain today that hamper dairy businesses from operating efficently and which prevent small farmers from obtaining the best value for their milk. The principle problems listed were: limitations on the ability to improve the quality of livestock (because of an embargo on cross border cattle movement from India and very limited artificial insemination facilities), limited access to credit for small holder farmers, and the depressing effect on supply of the price fixing system used by the Government’s Dairy Development Board.

The meeting went on to 4pm in the afternoon, 3 hours after its due closure time, because of the intense interest of the participants in the discussion. One outcome was that government officials agreed to look into the possibility of an official visit to India to, amongst other things, hold discussions on cross border cattle movement.

This sort of meeting is part of a participatory market mapping and facilitation process that Practical Action has developed over the past few years to help all actors in a market chain better understand how a market works and what could be done differently to improve the value to all participants but, in particular, to make markets work for the poor. For more information see our website at: http://practicalaction.org/markets-2

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Making water safe

Globally, a significant proportion of disease is due to unsafe drinking water. This accumulates further in absence of better sanitation and hygiene.

In 2008, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported that almost one tenth of the global disease burden could be prevented by improving water supply, sanitation, hygiene and management of water resources. The same report said that 10.6 per cent of deaths in Nepal are WSH (water, sanitation and hygiene) related. It also reported that 14,700 people die each year due to preventable diarrhoeal disease.

Although the Department of Water Supply and Sewerage claimed that 80 per cent of total households in Nepal have access to improved drinking water (DWSS 2010), water quality is a major challenge. As more than 50 per cent of the population defecate in open spaces, drinking water contamination is a common issue.

Water is a major medium for faecal oral transmission, causing millions of deaths globally and thousands in Nepal.

A water safety plan is a tool that ensures the delivery of safe drinking water from its catchments to consumers (“in Nepali Mul Dekhi Mukh samma”).

Water Safety Plans (WSPs) has been taken as a new concept and tool for managing risk in assuring water quality in water systems from source to the consumers. WSPs offer the most cost-effective and protective means of consistently assuring a supply of safe drinking water. WSPs operate through ‘catchment to consumers’ risk management approaches based on sound science and supported by appropriate monitoring. It can be applied across a wide range of situations from household solutions to community water supply schemes to large water supply utilities. WSPs identify the possible hazards in a water supply system with the level of risk, how it can be controlled and the actions required for hazard control.

For further information on our work in Nepal on safe water, sanitation and hygiene, go to http://practicalaction.org/region_nepal_healthy_homes

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The wind of change – decentralised energy system in remote village, Nepal

“Our children now even do their homework in the evening and we do our household chores” – “we do not have difficulties moving around the village in the night with provision of the street light” – “we now have televisions in our village – this has improved our access to information and children can enjoy the entertainment programmes”.

These are some quotes of our beneficiaries in Hurhure Dada, Nawalparsi – West Nepal where I recently visited. This village was declared as a Renewable Energy Village by Practical Action and provided various energy options to the villagers. The Dada top of the hill is a windy hill – Practical Action captured all year wind data of the Dada and installed five small scale wind turbines together with some solar PVs with support of Livelihood Forestry Programme of the DFID. The system provided solar lantern charging facility to the villagers. Earlier the villagers were depending on kerosene wick lamp for lighting which was unsafe and hazardous for health. Now, the village has 24 hour dedicated grid electricity supply covering 46 households from the wind-solar hybrid system. The windy Dada now has two 5 kW turbines and 2 kWp solar panels, which is first of its kind in Nepal. Although I was in remote village the 24 hours electricity supply made me happy since Kathmandu the capital of the country is under huge power cut (14 hours) in a day. This follow up project was implemented by the Alternative Energy Promotion Centre (AEPC) of the government of Nepal with technical assistance of Practical Action and financial assistance of the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

With facilitation of Practical Action the villagers are organised and establishing a cooperative to run this renewable energy system sustainably. The user group has already identified two individuals as operators who are currently under on-the-job training. The enthusiastic villagers are planning further to use the electricity for the productive end use during the off load time. This demonstrates the success of decentralised energy system and possibility of community managed wind and solar power harnessing in Nepal.

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Farmer to farmer knowledge sharing

The mission of Practical Answers is to contribute to the improvement of livelihoods, by providing knowledge services and facilitating sharing of technical knowledge relevant to development processes and poverty eradication.

Based on this mission, Practical Answers in Nepal, in partnership with READ Nepal, has been working with communities to establish knowledge nodes - places where people can get information, such as a room in a village that has an internet connection.

There are more than half a dozen ways of providing technical information people, particularly to the poor communities who can use such information and knowledge to improve their livelihoods.

Farmer to farmer knowledge sharing is one such model. People who are skilled and trained through Practical Action’s projects respond people who contact Practical Answers with an enquiry. The limitation is that only enquiries related to the training will be responded through the farmers to farmers model. However, there are other responding models such as interactions between community and experts, animal health camp, radio programme, linking the enquiries with related government agencies in district and local level to respond the broader enquiries.

Market Access for Smallholder Farmers (MASF) is a project Practical Action has been implementing in four districts of Nepal.

Nirmala Bogiti and Shanti Parajuli have been trained through the MASF project in basic animal management, fodder/forage management and they have participated in workshops on livestock health.

In the process of collecting enquiries through Practical Answers in Chitwan and Nawalparasi we found some of the communities wanted to know how they can keep their livestock healthy, for example, how they can prepare balanced diet.

Based on the enquiries, knowledge nodes organised a- farmer to farmer knowledge sharing practical interaction in a few communities to test how effective this model would be to implement in other communities.

Nirmala and Shanti shared their knowledge and taught Practical Answers enquirers how they can prepare mineral blocks using local resources, what the ingredients are and what the benefits are for the livestock to keep them healthy.

 

The model was very effective as enquirers directly ask many more questions related with dairy farming with the trained and skilled farmers like Nirmala and Shanti. Nirmala and Shanti are among the successful farmers of the MASF project who have significantly increased their income through dairy farming. While they shared their experience and stories on how they became successful farmers, they inspired the enquirers who asked for information on dairy farming and also received practical information from them.

The knowledge sharing process doesn’t end here. While farmers received knowledge from leader farmers, they apply it for themselves and pass on to other farmers  who are in need for such knowledge. While Karnakhar Acharya from Nawalparasi received practical knowledge to prepare mineral block from Nirmala then he has been supporting other farmers in his communities who ask him about the mineral block.

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Bermuda Triangle of economic empowerment

Read my review of the conversations, sharing and  learning that went on at the SEEP Network Annual Conference and find out what the Bermuda Triangle of economic empowerment is all about.

I presented Practical Action’s Bangladesh work in one of the Vulnerable Populations workshops. Alison Griffith and Lucho Osorio were also at the conference, presenting  lessons of engaging with the national level private sector in Nepal and managing complexity in market development, respectively.

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Nepalese couple defied the odds

Nirmala Bogati and her husband Shyam Bogati are a sought after couple in their village. Both Nirmala and Shyam are dairy farmers from Chitwan District and are confident that they can earn better in their own village than their neighbours who often resort to foreign employment.

Recently, Nirmala and Shyam shared their story of success to Radio Audio’s Khulduli.com programme.  Through khulduli.com their stories were broadcasted to 35 districts in Nepal. This is a story of a regular couple who defied odds and ditched foreign employment to work on their farm instead. 

Shyam states, “I had been raising cows and selling milk for the past 15 years. I lost four cows in a month and that is when we hit the lowest point in our lives. I thought of going to a foreign country but luckily our future had something better in store for us.”

Nirmala heard about the MASF-Dairy component Project providing series of training sessions on livestock management, shed management, techniques to increase milk production, feed and fodders, mineral blocks as well as practical knowledge on overall dairy value in Nepal. She immediately shared the information with her husband and decided Nirmala would attend the training classes.

“As soon as I attended the classes I was confident I could improve our living standard. My husband and I started growing quality grass for our livestock, we kept our livestock clean, we sought timely medical care, and we provided the livestock with the mineral blocks which helps in digestion and provides essential nutrients. And in time the milk production increased and our income too. In a year we have added two cows which totals to four milking cows. We sell NPR 200,000 worth milk and our net profit is NPR 120,000. Our monthly income is around NPR 20,000,” said Nirmala.

Through the radio programme both Nirmala and Shyam share the importance of home grown opportunities. They also state that they are earning much more and are happy that the whole family is together. Nirmala and Shyam encourage those seeking foreign jobs to work and seek opportunities in Nepal and Shyam hands out his mobile number to those seeking information on good practices of dairy farming.

You can listen to their story at http://www.aradioaudio.com/index.php?pageName=taaza&nid=255

Nirmala and Shyam have shown that if there is a will there is a way out. 

 

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