RE whether sanitation is always a push product - In iDE Cambodia's work, currently the bottleneck is supply, NOT demand. Once you develop a product that addresses people's needs/wants, and get the word out, you need to understand that there will be very strong demand. The challenge is to make sure your supply is ready to address that demand. In Cambodia, we're dealing with lots of SMEs, totally different from the mass production of Bangladesh, so lots of constraints preventing us from going to scale consistently across the country. Nevertheless, it's a good problem to have. The next phase of our project is to look at "how might we unblock the supply chain constraints" to meet this very strong demand.
I think one important point that was not yet discussed is also the importance of the human ressources: to find the suitable person(s) for the requested job(s), and to keep them on the long term (keep them interested in their work with incentive). If you want scaling up, you need to secure services and then it relies on people!
And I will say also scaling up rapidely will also need the support for certification (recognition of quality), that is far from easy to obtain as a small scale entreprise (where do you get certification? can it be the private sector only) especially in countries where water quality is not seen as a prority for instance.
Thanks, Zahid.
For iDE Cambodia's recent milestone of 100,000 latrines:
http://www.ideorg.org/OurStory/Publications/iDE_PR_CBD100k.pdf
http://www.ideorg.org/OurStory/Publications/iDE_infographic_100k.pdf
For info on SaTo Pan experience:
http://designexpo.businessfightspoverty.org/design-expo-showcase/sa...
If there are any other examples you'd like more information on, just let me know and I will add.
By "software" I mean the non-hardware related aspects of a program that are critical to the successful launch of a product.
In the case of Dispensers for Safe Water, the dispenser hardware is complimented by a suite of community education programs. Each dispenser installation is accompanied by interactions with stakeholders on all levels, from regional government, to each community water point. Each interaction has a script that has been tailored to the audience based on extensive feedback from operational research.
Without a doubt - we need to figure out waste management. There are lot of interesting things happening right now in terms of business models for urban spaces, but the nut remains to be cracked for the rural space. iDE Cambodia is currently working on a household level disinfectant technology using hydrated lime. Interested to hear others' thoughts on their solutions.
I actually see three but I am sure there are many more: 1. Water safety. The international community has operated on an evaluation scheme for a long time that has in general looked at access to improved water sources as an indicator of whether people are getting safe water. However, we know that in many cases improved water supplies and even tap water can become contaminated. Therefore, it will be a challenge to collect more sophisticated information and develop a stronger monitoring scheme that can actually tell product developers, program implementers and funders, where water supplies are actually contaminated and what they are contaminated with. Not just fecal coliform but is there a Rotavirus problem, a Cryptosporidium problem, a heavy metals problem, etc. Different situations will require different technologies and solutions. 2. Climate Change: it affects everything we do and it is going to change water supplies and affect sanitation, making us continuously having to collect new information and adapt. 3. The challenge that has always been and remains- to reach the most poor, vulnerable, and hard-to-reach segments of society that cannot afford to pay for services and who may live out of reach either in geography or because of politics or conflict. Business cannot do this alone, and it has taken and will continue to take innovative partnerships between bilateral aid agencies, governments, NGOs and business to make this happen.
Wow, there are so many lining up...
- On a national scale, I would say finding investments (to scale up), and clear strategy with priorities. Also really try to reduce the disparity between urban and rural areas but also the disparties in seasonality.
- On a local scale, behavior change (which takes such a long time), the limited sustainability of many programmes set up technologies, and then maintenance, after sales services)
Yes, I think collaborations are necessary.
There are few sanitation options around the world that are not subsidised... So in any market the government should be able to chip in. In Nairobi we are working closely with the Ministry for Public Health and Sanitation to start a governmental program for de-worming in the schools that have Peepoo toilets.
The hygiene education as part of school programmes is important, however the situation in many informal settlements today is that many governments don't even recognise them, even less want to subsidise them.
Hygiene promotion could very well be done by the business it self, but in collaborations with NGOs the credability would be even higher.
In Goma we are working with Caritas to implement the Peepoo Business Model. Through their priests and medical doctors and health care centres they are now driving big campaigns on hygiene in order to educate the market on need for sanitation.
In line with my previous comments, I think one of the greatest challenges is to fully understand the "spectrum of contexts" across different regions and countries in WASH that can inform the development of a) a robust, evidence-based "spectrum of approaches", and b) can inform the identification of areas where we can cross-pollinate technological, conceptual and approach-based successes.
As I've mentioned previously, at iDE we focus on a high degree of contextualization of the technical strategy and the approaches utilized to achieve results in WASH. But it isn't easy to connect the dots between wildly different market contexts with highly differentiated private, public and development sector players and conditions.
Good!
I would say operationalising the vast amount of information and data that exists in silos. I would like to plug sharing data and being able to adapt programs to respond to the vast amount of information out there. Even within the WASH sector, I feel that we tend to silo program (toilets, hand washing, water, etc) and disregard the learnings from another sector.
With sanitation the size of the problem is so large that push will be too painfully slow and will struggle. It has to become a pull product and generally people are quite uniform in their opinions as to the attributes of a beautiful toilet. It just that the supply chains to allow to acquire one are dysfunctional.
Hi Fanny,
I completely agree that strong human resources are so important and often left out of the discussion. It is the people on the ground that make these programs work and you need great, organized, motivated people. In some ways, I think businesses are often able to sustain human resources better over the long-term because they are not subject to grant cycles which require short term contracts and uncertainty. In Kenya, several of our staff have been with us for 20+ years and have been able to build incredibly valuable and sustained relationships.
I'm new to WASH, but am particularly interested in menstrual health and think the challenge of dealing with increasing amounts of menstrual hygiene product waste as (hopefully) more women have access to them as a challenge; and how menstrual health can be mainstreamed into WASH
I agree! Safe disposal of human excreta is a huge problem. We need to take responsibility for the waste, otherwise it will end up in waterways and spread disease anyway. And then it won't matter how many people you can say have been supplied with sanitation.
Fanny - I think you bring up a very important point about HR. In a lot of the contexts we work in, HR is a HUGE challenge - recruiting, developing, and retaining talent. We've found that developing the right CULTURE is first and foremost. It may seem fluffy, but if you get it right, it can overcome so many obstacles, from those specific to your country context, to just general management challenges. It really requires strong, visionary, humble leadership to create a space that nurtures this kind of culture. What have you guys done to overcome this challenge?
Yep - our experience as well, especially in in urban areas. Where another constraint to uptake is " What do we do when it is full?"
One example of a recent success we had in this area, however, was leveraging iDE Cambodia's product innovations developed under the award-winning "Easy Latrine" that recently crossed 100,000 sold in 2 years.
While the Cambodian and Bangladeshi market contexts couldn't be any different - Cambodia immature with a focus on basic open defecation reduction, and Bangladesh 97% ODF but with 46% of 150 million people not accessing JMP "improved" (read: hygienic) facilities - in Bangladesh we were able to utilize a key technology component of the Easy Latrine to fit the SaTo Pan onto offset latrines - a problem we had previously been unable to solve while working with American Standard on the product. The market context was different, but the basic technology and user experience was similar enough that we could replicate Cambodia's innovation in Bangladesh.
I am interested to hear about issues you have faced with micro finance in your programs.
Fanny, I completely agree, and I like the national/local dichotomy to frame the technical/implementation challenges. I think a key way to address most of these elements head on is to find the right commercial partner(s) and invest significant programmatic resources in developing a rapport that can deliver a "build-transfer-own" style partnership between the NGO and the business. If we challenge ourselves in the devt. sector to only demonstrate/pilot on the ground once we are confident issues of maintenance, after sales services, and investment have at least conceptual likelihood with a partner with whom we are engaging, the likelihood of failure when we begin to pilot on the ground diminishes and the likelihood of sustainability/scalability is maximized. Easier said than done to be sure, but I think we need to hold ourselves to a harsh level of preparedness before we pilot in the field.