During the Mentawai Tsunami Recovery Program, SurfAid worked with partner arche noVa to implement clean water facilities. Besides hardware, arche noVa also tried to increase awareness about hygiene practice. Although some public latrines were built by different international NGOs (non-governmental organisations), most of the community members were defecating in the open, in the forest or river.
CLTS (Community-led Total Sanitation) is an approach where communities are “triggered” about their hygiene practices. At the end of the activity, community members sign a contract that they will build a simple private latrine.
Sabiret, a hamlet in South Pagai which was hit directly by the tsunami and where all community members were displaced to the 27km area, was one of the hamlets triggered by arche Nova staff.
Three months after the community members were triggered, Sabiret received the open defecation free certificate which means that more than 90 per cent of community members were using a simple latrine for defecation instead of the forest or the river. The head of the village went a little step further when a couple of other families wanted to join the village - they were only allowed to join if they immediately built a simple latrine.
At the same time, arche noVa built a new water system in Sabiret. Because the hamlet was extended by some more families during the project, the community raised some more funding to extend the arche noVa facilities by themselves.
Community member Mr Bilson said that after the CLTS training, they went home and gave information to the other community members and they immediately began work. “There is a change in the minds of the community members that their lives have not been healthy. In the old village people did not have toilets. I built this toilet without funds because my family and I want to live healthier.”
Mrs Melita agreed: “We used to defecate at random, we didn’t use toilets. We’ve been able to make personal toilets which have benefited the environment which is now clean.”