To-Date Achievements

Project Sammaan has been going full-steam ahead for well over a year now. Several posts have been written over the last few months detailing the many challenges that have been faced thus far, so we thought it pertinent to review the achievements that the team is most proud of.

1. Facility design features were finalized.

After months of internal deliberations and community engagement exercises, the design features of the facilities were agreed upon, thereby allowing the individual facility designs to proceed. This is the first, most critical, component of the design process and one that seeks to shift the Potty Project findings from the conceptual phase and into practice.

The first point of the project’s grant proposal is to “reduce the incidence of open defecation and improve health among the urban poor.” Designing with these parameters in mind requires deviating from the standard model of simple toilet blocks, to offer additional amenities that cater to all sanitation needs.

To this end, enhancements such as bathing and hand-washing stations, menstrual waste incinerators, children’s toilets, and universal access stalls for physically-impaired users were added. Furthermore, functional aesthetic improvements such as improved natural lighting and ventilation were taken into consideration and included in architectural designs.

2. The toilet facility brand name and statement has been created and presented to internal stakeholders.

The branding and subsequent communication for Sanitation System Prototype is one of the key areas of intervention that can drive adoption of the sanitation facilities and lead to awareness and behavior change with regards to sanitation and well-being.

The Project Sammaan facilities’ brand vision and values are driven by the need to:

• CREATE AWARENESS ABOUT THE INVISIBLE LINK BETWEEN DISEASES AND IMPROPER SANITATION

  • A majority of people do not seem to attribute transmission of diseases to poor sanitation and waste management. Many attribute illness to poor water quality even if it is caused by other environmental factors. For instance, gastrointestinal ailments are always attributed to contaminated water rather than vectors such as flies, or water contaminated by poor waste management. These occurrences point to a larger lack of understanding of the repercussions of poor sanitation and waste management habits and practices.

• SEED BEHAVIOR CHANGE THROUGH EMULATION

  • Diffusion of new habits and behavior is driven mostly by emulating others rather than mass media or interventions external to the community. People in the slum learn about new practices, sanitation related or otherwise, by emulating either their peers or people they interact with at work.

• BUILD AN ASPIRATIONAL IMAGE AROUND SANITATION

  • While most personal hygiene products are connected to driving personal beauty, there is an absence of any connection between better sanitation and an aspirational self image. If sanitation and related FMCG products were branded in a way that not only raises issues about health and safety but also builds a desirable image, then users’ conscious uptake of new practices around sanitation (such as hand-washing, etc.) might increase.

• ENGAGE PEOPLE IN THE PLANNING PHASE

  • Agencies that work towards providing sanitation facilities in slums rarely consult residents during the planning and design phase of the community blocks. The supply side dynamics in a city (municipal corporation and planners) often do not emphasize deep community dialogue and collaborative design in sanitation rollout plans. It is considered more efficient to install standardized sanitation facilities.

Based on the insights on Communication & Messaging from the Potty Project, it is also important to build an aspirational image of the “better life” for the brand. The aspirational image translates into ideas of modern and urban – perceived as notions of moving up in one’s life.

Options and reasoning for the toilet brand name has been presented to government officials and is currently awaiting approval. A system for branding and communication is being worked on right now, with various options for messaging and visuals being deliberated upon.

3. Randomization activities for Base and Enhanced Layer facilities, across most sites, have been conducted.

The effectiveness of various toilet infrastructure interventions will be rigorously tested using a randomized impact evaluation methodology.

This type of evaluation uses random assignment to allocate resources, run programs, or apply policies as part of the study design. Like all impact evaluations, the main purpose of randomized evaluations is to determine whether a program has an impact, and more specifically, to quantify how large that impact is. Impact evaluations measure program effectiveness typically by comparing outcomes of those (individuals, communities, schools, etc) who received the program against those who did not. There are many methods of doing this. But randomized evaluations are generally considered the most rigorous and, all else equal, produce the most accurate (i.e. unbiased) results.

Prior to Project Sammaan’s interventions, J-PAL collected baseline data from households living in communities surrounding each toilet block. It also conducted detailed audits of the baseline toilet facilities. After the hardware and software interventions are introduced, toilet use at each facility at high frequency will be monitored, and ongoing monitoring data on open defecation practices and on the management challenges and financial health of the toilet operators will be collected. There will also be two further rounds of intensive household survey work: a midline survey for a subset of sample households, and a detailed endline survey at all sample households at the end of the project period.

4. Multiple user-experience exercises that directed several components of hardware design (e.g., Universal Access Stalls for physically impaired users) have taken place.

The mandate to design a facility that is both functional and valued by its host community can only be adhered to by including members of said community in the design process, both at its inception and throughout its development. This notion builds off of the initial research conducted during the Potty Project where end-user habits and individual aspirations were studied to identify areas for improvement in regards to sanitation in India’s urban slum context.

Co-design activities were conducted with community members in Bhubaneswar and Cuttack that included inputs from users to identify the elements that needed to be included in the facilities (e.g., hand-washing stations, menstrual waste incinerators) as well as the layout of these facilities. Community members shared their sanitation processes with researchers while also informing on physical design considerations for the facility.

As these facilities will serve the entire population of host communities, all users must be taken into consideration for the design and features. This necessitated prototyping activities with elderly and physically-impaired users, since they have unique needs outside the standard user set. As such, Quicksand created the “Potty Lab” to have volunteers identify features that would meet their needs while working within the spatial constraints each facility must adhere to.

5. Sewage treatment options were explored and presented for consideration.

While the initial scope of the project assumed that the toilets could be connected to the sewerage networks (existing and planned) in Bhubaneswar and Cuttack, it has turned out that this would not be possible for almost all our planned sites. This has meant that the Project Sammaan team has had to develop sewage treatment options, that keep in mind the tricky conditions of high groundwater and the tendency to flood, in both cities.

We have been working with CDD <http://www.cddindia.org>, to develop appropriate solutions for the toilets that we will be building. This includes full DEWATS treatment in selected sites where conditions are favorable, as well as a combination of advanced settlers and improved soak pits in other sites.

The team has been working closely with officials from the BMC & CMC to get requisite approvals and develop these solutions. In June, CDD will be working with Anagram Architects and Quicksand to develop detailed designs for all the Community Toilet sites in Bhubaneswar and Cuttack, which will be then included in the tender drawings to be submitted to the BMC & CMC.

The project has come a long way since its inception. The project team has overcome numerous hurdles and learned a great deal over this time and, collectively, there is a real sense of excitement building amongst the team members as the project prepares to construct the first of its facilities.

The many months of long nights and marathon meetings are paying dividends as we move closer and closer to breaking ground and providing the communities with the improved facilities they so desperately need. There is much work still to be done before we reach that moment, but it’s going to come sooner rather than later, and this thought has re-energized the team and instilled a sense of anxious excitement and camaraderie.