Determining the Effectiveness and Mode of Operation of Community-Led Total Sanitation: The DEMO-CLTS study

Globally, 2.3 billion people lack access to safe sanitation services and 892 million people practice open defecation, which poses a dramatic threat to public health. Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) aims at eliminating open defecation by applying participatory activities that engage entire communities. CLTS has shown to be successful in eradicating open defecation, however, results remain diverse and in-depth understanding of CLTS’ mechanisms is still lacking. This study from RanasMosler tries to close this research gap. It aims at revealing the effectiveness and mode of operation of the community-led total sanitation (CLTS) intervention to decrease the incidence of open defecation. In particular, it aimed at determining which elements of the CLTS implementation process are highly efficient in increasing latrine coverage and under which social conditions CLTS is most effective.

The study includes several references to "An Examination of CLTS’s Contributions toward Universal Sanitation" (2018), a literature review from the USAID-funded Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Partnerships and Sustainability (WASHPaLS) project.

RanasMosler is a spin-off of Eawag, the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology. Hans Mosler founded RanasMosler to advise national and international organizations in the development sector on behavior change. The unique feature of this advice is that it is based on theories of health and environmental psychology and has been corroborated in more than 70 scientific publications.