Distress to Dignity

Our work started in the city of Faridpur, where we have helped transform working and living conditions for residents and waste workers alike. Between 2017 and 2022, we expanded to four more towns. Some of the positive outcomes by the end of 2022 include:

• 305,000 people in five towns are being reached by the services of Faecal Sludge Management (FSM) co-operatives, including 60,000 slum dwellers.
• Safe human waste disposal has more than doubled, from 1.48m to 3.57m litres per year in Faridpur from 2017 to 2022.
• Incomes for co-operative members in Faridpur increased by 44% in Faridpur between 2017 and 2022.
• Workers have been trained in safe practices, and can access personal protective equipment, medical care and health insurances at lower costs, bringing benefits to 1,084 workers and their family members in five towns.
• In 2022, 15 vehicles were in use across the five towns – compared to only two in 2017.

We have developed innovative and ingenious solutions for faecal sludge management challenges and the public-private partnerships needed to maintain them. This includes:

• Three different types of waste transporting vehicles, ensuring access for hard-to-reach communities.
• Five innovations for de-sludging.
• Partnership with Metal PVT Ltd ensures the availability of innovative technologies in collection and transportation for the next ten years.
• Digital approaches to managing household services.
• An integrated approach for treatment, which combines human waste with organic household waste, to safely produce co-compost and compressed bio-gas.
• A local social enterprise, Society Development Committee, is contracted to manage the Compost Research Centre.

We utilised our insights and learning to create inclusive and sustainable sanitation best-practice business models that have facilitated the expansion from Faridpur into four more towns (Rajbari, Meherpur, Magura and Laksam). A further nine co-operatives have been formed with 252 members, bringing the total membership to 529. From 2022, with further funding support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, we’re working with waste and sanitation in ten towns and cities across Bangladesh.

We are also using our knowledge and experience to transform Faecal Sludge Management systems beyond the towns and cities where we work directly with waste worker co-operatives, demonstrating that big change can start small:

• Our innovative business model for pit emptying led by waste workers has been integrated into two national programmes.
• New Multi-Stakeholder Steering Committees have been formed across five municipalities, providing the co-operatives with influence in governance and investment.
• Municipal sanitation budgets were successfully influenced with at least 30% now allocated exclusively for decentralized faecal sludge management.
• Four municipalities have produced or updated their sanitation plans, following the application of our approach and learning.
• We successfully advocated for the inclusion of pro-poor and gender transformative approaches during the development of a new FSM Institutional and Regulatory Framework and the National Action Plan (2020) to deliver this.
• We’ve provided training and consultation to the national Urban Development Directorate, Dept. of Health and Engineering, on development plans, and through our role as Secretariat of the national FSM Network
• We have also provided advice on best practices to the City-Wide Inclusive Sanitation Hub for South Asia and with key sector partners (for example, Asian Development Bank and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) so that our approach can be replicated across Bangladesh, India and Vietnam.