Article and Image Courtesy: Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS)
Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) is an innovative methodology for mobilising communities to completely eliminate open defecation (OD).
Communities are facilitated to conduct their own appraisal and analysis of open defecation (OD) and take their own action to become ODF (open defecation free). CLTS was pioneered by Kamal Kar (a development consultant from India) together with VERC (Village Education Resource Centre), a partner of WaterAid Bangladesh, in 2000 in Mosmoil, a village in the Rajshahi district of Bangladesh, while evaluating a traditionally subsidised sanitation programme. Kar, who had years of experience in participatory approaches in a range of development projects, succeeded in persuading the local NGO to stop top-down toilet construction through subsidy.
Highlights of the September newsletter from the organisation:
- Training of Trainers on Community Led Total Sanitation in Gulbarga, Karnataka
- Rays of Hope in most populated and most open defecator province of India