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Building Blocks
Water, sanitation and hygiene education are like the ABC of development. They are the building blocks for a better future - underpinning health, education and livelihoods. But once the community has got the taps flowing and the latrines installed, how exactly do the benefits spread? Tom Burgess investigates. In Bangladesh, where 140 million people live in an area about the size of England and Wales, the need for sanitation is particularly acute. Near the western border with India, in the Mohanpur district around Rajshahi, quiet villages sit in the shade of trees beside broad paddy fields. But it hasn't always been as idyllic here. Until recently open defecation was widely practised, and the disease it brought made children too sick for school and adults unable to work. Unsurprisingly, the communities wanted change and started to work with our partner VERC - Village Education Resource Center - to make things happen. Nowadays, the people of Laloich village talk about how they were "ignited" into action once they became aware of the health risks of going to the toilet in the bushes or drinking from unprotected wells. VERC added fuel to their fiery determination to improve their environment, providing technical assistance to build hygienic latrines with roofs and screens for comfort and privacy. Wells were covered and water quality was tested. Ayub Ali is from the area and volunteers as a 'catalyst'. "I travel out to 19 villages in the area. Here, development is visible but not in other places. Initially in other villages they didn't care. I tried again and again but some people didn't pay attention. But when I brought people back to this village they could see for themselves the difference sanitation makes. Even a fool can see the benefits! So people are spreading the word themselves." This community-led approach to increasing sanitation coverage is built on the principle that for positive impacts to spread far and wide, people need to come closer together - and not just between communities but within them too. In the cramped slums of Chittagong, on the other side of Bangladesh, members of the community are helped to set up committees. These are volunteers, giving up their spare time to invest in the future of their families and neighbours. Shilpi Begum, 35, is a member of the community management committee (CMC) set up to look after the new latrine block. She says, "There used to be lots of open latrines and open defecation. There were so many flies and insects and bad smells. My children would get diarrhoea and dysentery. When they were sick, their suffering was my suffering.
"The role of the CMC is to help wash the latrines, open them up in the morning and lock them at night and encourage everyone to use them. The latrines have made a big difference to our lives. Everyone uses the latrine and if we see them creeping off to defecate in the open we tell them to stop!" It is in stories like these that we see community participation itself as one of the most important wider impacts of access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene education. Development goes far beyond health benefits and escape from drudgery - it's about building strong, productive societies that are able to take care of the poor and vulnerable. It's about women and men establishing roles for themselves and everyone pulling together, building and maintaining safe water and sanitation facilities. It's not rocket science but it provides a launchpad for people's lives. "We used to use nclean water, now we don't even touch unclean water," says Anwara from Baganbari slum in Dhaka. "Now we say that our children have become beautiful using the clean water. Disease has been reduced so we save money on medicines and doctors. We also save time and can concentrate on doing other things, like working. Life now is a thousand times better than it was."
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