When being questioned “Why this project”? most people answer, for example: ‘production will raise’ …, or ‘improving the efficiency’…., or ‘raised professionalism’ …., etc., etc..
And if you are creative you may come up with endless of such arguments in a brainstorming session.
All these answers are expectations or opportunities and might indeed materialize in future. Although that ‘day-dreaming’ is considered interesting and energizing by the participants, it does not actually require knowledge on the actual current situation. And you can question whether those ‘arguments’ form a sufficient justification to support the project. On the contrary!
Community-Led Total Sanitation, or CLTS as it is called is apparently quite successful and needs to be scaled up in order to achieve Open Defecation Free Afghanistan by the year 2025. However, its success depends mainly on the quality of the facilitators who manages the process at the community level and lead the villagers into this rather confrontational process. “The walk of shame” being one of the key activities is literally a tour together with the community members around the village to identify places where open defecation is practised. It is even customary to trace the persons who ‘committed this crime’. Learning the implications through embarrassment seems to motivate people to change their behaviour and build their own latrine without the subsidy as is common in many other programmes.
I have the impression that more and more Knowledge Institutions establish a Valorisation Unit. We have been involved with a couple of them and based on those experiences I like to share some of the steps we advised to follow.
What would you respond to the question: “Why this project?”
