Community-Led Total Sanitation Strategies
Introduction to CLTS
A Community-Led Approach
Community-Led Total Sanitation, or CLTS, is an approach to improving public health by ending open defecation. Unlike traditional programs that build toilets for people, CLTS focuses on changing behavior. The goal is to trigger a collective desire within a community to become “Open Defecation Free” (ODF).
The core idea is that lasting change comes from within. Instead of being passive recipients of aid, community members take the lead. They analyze their own sanitation situation, realize the consequences of open defecation, and decide together to build and use toilets, creating a cleaner and healthier environment for everyone.
A Shift in Thinking
For decades, the standard solution to poor sanitation was to provide hardware. Governments and aid organizations would fund and build latrines, assuming that if toilets were available, people would use them. But this often failed. Toilets fell into disrepair, were used for storage, or only served a few families, leaving the broader problem of open defecation unsolved.
In the early 2000s, a development consultant named Kamal Kar was working in a village in Bangladesh. He noticed the failure of these subsidy-based programs and tried a new approach. Instead of talking about toilets, he facilitated a community analysis of their own sanitation practices. This was the birth of CLTS.
The focus shifted from counting newly built toilets to celebrating communities that became entirely free of open defecation.
This new method treated community members as thinkers and actors, not just beneficiaries. The realization that they were, in effect, ingesting their neighbors' feces created a powerful emotional response that hardware subsidies never could.
How It Works
CLTS operates on a few core principles that make it distinct from other sanitation initiatives.
| Principle | Description |
|---|---|
| No Subsidies | The community is not given free or subsidized toilets. This encourages ownership and the use of affordable, local materials, ensuring solutions are sustainable. |
| Community Empowerment | External facilitators don't teach or preach. They use participatory tools to help the community see the problem for themselves. This process is called “triggering.” |
| Focus on Behavior | The goal isn't just to build latrines, but to stop open defecation entirely. The approach uses emotions like disgust and shame to motivate a collective shift in social norms. |
| Total Sanitation | The aim is for the entire community to become ODF. A single person practicing open defecation can still spread disease, so collective action is essential. |
Global Adoption
From its origins in Bangladesh, CLTS has spread rapidly across the globe. Governments and non-governmental organizations in dozens of countries, particularly in Asia and Africa, have adopted it as their primary strategy for rural sanitation.
Its success lies in its scalability and sustainability. Because it doesn't rely on expensive subsidies, it can be rolled out widely. More importantly, because the drive for change comes from the community itself, the results are more likely to last. Millions of people now live in ODF villages, thanks to this simple but profound shift in approach.
Now, let's review the core ideas behind this powerful approach.
What is the primary focus of the Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) approach?
CLTS was developed in the early 2000s in response to the common failure of which type of sanitation program?
By empowering communities to lead their own sanitation journey, CLTS provides a sustainable path toward a healthier future.