Water for Women talks sh*t this World Toilet Day

Reflections on sanitation from Water for Women WASH Specialist, Matthew Bond

I’ve now been excited by sanitation for so long that I take for granted my interest in toilets. If I was to go back twenty years, however, I’m sure I would find this surprising. I certainly never imagined travelling around the world taking thousands of photos of toilets, both domestic and institutional, shining my torch into countless latrines or searching communities for signs of open defecation. My friends, as much as my colleagues, are now accustomed to me talking about shit on a regular basis. I aim to drop it into professional conversations whenever I can, especially when talking to policy makers and those responsible for aid budgets (and I’m pleased to see that it’s only taken only a few sentences for shit to pop up here; and that it hasn’t been censored).

Fortunately, in the time I’ve been working in the WASH sector, it’s been easier and easier to get everyone—from communities to implementing agencies to donors—interested in sanitation. Sanitation may not have been allocated an SDG all of its own, but it is front and centre in SDG6. Its pivotal role in achieving health outcomes has long been understood—even if development funding for sanitation lagged that for water—but a perception lingers that communities don’t really prioritise sanitation in the way they do water. I often wonder whether that’s because it’s a subject that’s embarrassing to talk about, particularly to a government official or NGO worker who has shown up in your community to talk about needs. I think it is also because we haven’t been asking the right people about their priorities. Anyone who’s lived without a toilet or experienced that mild panic when travelling and not being able to find one knows how exciting sanitation can be. Certainly, those who have talked to people with a disability who have lived without a toilet or women in cultural contexts where open defecation can only take place at night, know what a priority sanitation is when it comes to dignity, safety and quality of life. I’m sure that as a sector we haven’t asked these people often enough what their WASH priorities are.

The Water for Women CSO projects reflect the strong and continued emphasis on sanitation within the sector, almost all Water for Women projects involve an improving sanitation component. The approaches being used also reflect a systems understanding of how changes occurs, with most projects combining support to institutions, creation of demand and strengthening of supply. There is a very strong body of expertise amongst the Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and our research partners, which Water for Women will benefit greatly from. As a whole, this expertise and anticipated cross-learning between agencies will be of great value to the Fund, our partners, the wider WASH sector and of course, the people and communities we aim to reach.

Ultimately, these efforts will result in more households, schools, health facilities and other institutions having access to safe, reliable and well-maintained toilets.

This diversity of thinking and the range of context-appropriate approaches is an exciting part of Water for Women’s sanitation component. That diversity extends well beyond ideas within the implementing CSOs—the Fund’s emphasis on inclusion gives us continued incentive to engage end-users in creating their own sanitation solutions.

One of my more memorable WASH learning experiences highlights this opportunity. I asked a community member in a remote village in northern Vietnam how difficult it had been to build their new toilet. The response changed the way I thought about the need to ‘solve’ the sanitation problem: ‘if we had known how easy it was to build a toilet we would have built one years ago’.

Our challenge is to continue promoting the importance of sanitation and to learn from one another and the end-users we work with. We need to create opportunities for households and communities to join in creating sanitation solutions and unleashing the diversity of creativity, ingenuity and innovation that that entails.