Sanitation is go! 

The villagers of Akkelpur create a map of their village including houses, ponds, water points and sites of open defecation.

Credit: WaterAid / Juthika Howlader

With millions of people in Bangladesh still living in small rural communities without any hygienic sanitation facilities, it's easy to understand why open defecation remains common. But WaterAid's partner in the Rajshahi region, the Village Education Resource Centre (VERC), is pioneering a radical approach to solving the sanitation problem… and it's spreading fast.

The community-led total sanitation (CLTS) approach has already had a huge impact in Bangladesh. Last year alone WaterAid and its partners helped over one million people in Bangladesh gain access to a latrine through its methods.

The key to its success is convincing communities to take action themselves. Neighbouring communities then see the difference sanitation makes to village life and so the learning spreads. It can be provocative, and it's certainly not subtle, but it works.

A day spent with VERC in the village of Akkelpur illustrated exactly how they go about 'igniting' local communities into taking immediate action to address their sanitation problems.

>>View our slide show to see the stages of the process.

Harunor Rashid, the Chairman of the Union Parishad (parish), attended the day to witness the founding of the community's committee and to show that activities have the local government's support. In short, his presence is an endorsement and a confidence builder that the project will be a success.

"I'm very happy that VERC are here," he explains. "I am staying here all day to make sure things really get moving. In other villages they are improving sanitation, but they're not at 100% yet. I'd like to see villages 100% covered and I believe very soon the whole Union will be 100% covered.

Harunor Rashid, Chairman of the Union Parishad, shows his support for the community-led total sanitation approach.

Credit: WaterAid / Juthika Howlader

"Once people get on the sanitation ladder, people want to get higher and higher up the ladder and it becomes self-sustaining. Once we have 100% sanitation people will be too shy or ashamed to openly defecate and won't go back to their old ways. I'm very confident about this, it's already happening.

"If a child gets a waterborne disease, the family has to pay at least 5000Tk (£36) to help cure them, but they can buy a sanitary latrine for only 100Tk (60p) or less. If a lot of families have to pay medical bills the economic burden on them is huge.

"The model is excellent in terms of benefit. For low cost, people get the same benefits as higher cost toilet solutions: no smells, no flies, no faecal matter is seen, and so on. I see no reason why this couldn't be rolled out nationwide."

Such optimism is not misplaced. The day in Akkelpur showed how ignition really works and the good news is that similar success stories can be seen across Bangladesh.

The challenge now, being actively pursued by WaterAid, is to reach more people in Bangladesh and try and replicate the approach in other countries around the world.