CLTS is an alternative approach to conventional sanitation programs that focuses on changing community attitudes and behaviors through collective action rather than individual support. Key elements include community decision making, social solidarity, and local innovation. The CLTS process involves facilitating workshops to raise awareness of health risks from open defecation and empowering communities to devise their own solutions. While successful in many areas, challenges remain in fully understanding social, ecological, and technological dynamics and how to sustain behavior change long-term.

1. Meeting the MDGs: The Potential of Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) Synne Movik

6. Transect walks Walking through the bush to find the stuff! Rural community near Awassa, Ethiopia leading a OD transect team. Slums in the outskirts of Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia – locations where sources of water get contaminated with human excreta are important points to stop during a defecation area transect and discuss with the community.

7. Mapping ‘ Who shits where?’ Community members in Tororo, Uganda, map places used for open defecation. Photo: Philip Otieno, Plan Kenya. In a well facilitated CLTS triggering, villagers in Tanzania calculating household shit, the ignition point is often reached while they are doing this

8. Raising awareness of sanitation and health linkages Philip Otieno of Plan Kenya contaminating drinking water with shit before offering it to community members to drink during a hands-on CLTS training in Tanzania. Photo: Samuel Musyoki, Plan Kenya.

9. Devising solutions A village woman in the Andean mountain region of Llallagua, Bolivia, proudly presents her newly constructed latrine made of mud, bricks and stone. Photo: Meghan Myles, UNICEF Bolivia

12. Group characteristics Demographics Power relations Gender relations Cultural practices Religious norms Perceptions of shit Sentiments/needs/desires Health problems Mindset Creativity Materials Supply networks Maintenance Infrastructure Cost Traditions for masonry Availability Marketing Architechture Social Technological Ecological Climate conditions Landscape changes Settlement patterns Wet/arid Floods/droughts Soil types Water/groundwater table Vegetation cover Presence of pathogens