How we distributed the first 500 Biosand Filters.

If you have read my previous post titled “Producing and Distributing Biosand Filters, Round 1”, then perhaps you wondered how we chose whom to distribute filters to.  Or if you have done some other reading or have experience in development work, you might ask how we ensure that the Biosand Filters (BSFs) contribute to the goal of positive, lasting changes in persons and communities, and how we mitigate the risks that any product distribution project can run into?  In this post I will attempt to answer these questions (and you can keep me accountable to that!)

Our BSF distribution is just part of our broader WASH program (remember Water, Advocacy, Sanitation, and Hygiene).  The evidence of success in a program like this is not how many products we distribute, but how much the people themselves change in each of the WASH subjects.  Because we say we value personal and social changes, we have to be able to measure and record them.  Donor organizations of course need regular reports, but reports are even more important for the communities we are working for.  In order to measure and record change, we begin to gather Baseline Data from the first visit.

Baseline Data is simply information that describes the living situation of communities prior to any project’s activities.  We gather this data so that we have something to compare the end result to.  Basically, the baseline is the “before” picture that we snap of the community.  Our local CDP facilitators are trained to enter new villages as learners, and not make a big show of the knowledge and ideas they have, especially during Baseline Data gathering time.  The point of this time is to listen, learn, and respect poor community members for what they are able to do, and not blame or shame them for what they have not done or cannot do.  A good summary of Baseline Data flows like a story told by a community resident, and contains a significant portion of verbatim statements of community members.  One activity that helps the Baseline Data time flow smoothly is mapping.  Our team might ask community members to take them on a walk in the village, or sit and draw a map on paper or in the dirt.  Mapping or village walks are simple tools that provide many topics and make conversation, discussions, and questions come easier.

Baseline Data should flow like a story, and it should also be packed with details that describe a representation of the households.  Sitting in the mosque or walking around the village provides some insights, but it is also essential to get into some homes.  This is tricky because it is possible for village members to take the lead and show us only what they want us to see.  On the other hand, we do not want to walk into a house uninvited and without reason.  One way to get past this is to number all the houses on the map, put numbered paper scraps in a hat, and then have volunteers draw some numbers out.  We usually aim to talk with at least 15-20% of the households, so we ask the volunteers to draw out 15-20% of the numbers in the hat.  The numbers they pull are then the houses we visit, and the group around knows about this and sends children to warn the households that visitors are coming! 

In each of the homes, our female facilitators ask for a woman willing to answer some questions for what we call a KAP survey.  KAP stands for Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice.  I personally do not like questionnaire surveys at all, but the KAP survey has a plus in that it seeks information from different angles.  We cannot assume that because a person says it is right to boil their river water that they actually do, it is best to ask.  Here’s a few other questions on our KAP survey:

            -Why do you wash your hands?

            -How many buckets of water do you fetch every day?

-How do you store water to keep it clean?

-How do you describe the quality of your water?

            -Do you treat your water before drinking?  If yes what method?

-Do you have a latrine?  If yes can I see it?  If no… where do you go?  Where do you take your children to go?

-What are the reasons to have a latrine?

-How do you prevent diahrrea in children?

-What do you do if your child has severe diahrrea?

            After these and others questions are asked in the KAP survey, the summary of data is compiled from each village, and along with the narrative data from village meetings, we keep a folder we call the Baseline.

The Baseline is useful information to keep for various projects, but we use the KAP more specifically to help us cater a hygiene course to the specific needs in each village.  The KAP tells us what the main gaps are in people’s understandings, any wrong teachings or attitudes they have bought into, and the actual behavior of people there in regard to water and sanitation.  The KAP also help us identify the families most vulnerable to water-borne or fecal-borne disease, and these become the families that we specifically hope to interest in hygiene training.

The female facilitators in our project run the hygiene training currently, and they have borrowed methodology from an excellent local-midwife training course called BLISS (Basic Live Saving Skills).  This course uses dramas, role-casting, and other participatory teaching methods to connect with illiterate and traditional people.  In the same way our facilitators do not lecture, but rather bring lesson material in a way that engages the women from the community.

I wish I could say that our hygiene course is so good that when women complete the course they immediately buy a Biosand Filter and build a healthy latrine.  That might be the case in a community that has not been spoon-fed by a whole list of NGOs.  Sadly, almost all communities in this area have been paid to take a training course, and that has completely changed the local mentality about learning.  Yes you heard me right, many NGOs pay the villagers to come to their training, not the other way around.  The effect this has on our project is that we are unable to do any training without at least offering an incentive. 

We have used the Biosand Filters as an incentive for our hygiene training, but there’s also a catch in the incentive program.  Women that are interested in our hygiene training (sometimes because they really want to learn about proper hygiene and sometimes because they show interest because they think they can get paid to sit in your course and twiddle their thumbs) are told that our course is practical, and it encourages hygiene behavior changes.  Further, we tell them that any participant who applies 2 lessons learned by making 2 positive changes in her house will then receive a Biosand Filter.  In this way we encourage participation, learning, and changes, and yes, we have given away a lot of Biosand Filters in this way. 

Well that took a lot longer to explain than I planned, but I hope it made some sense.  I am very open to your feedback on the way we have done this program, because we are currently evaluating and moving to a new phase of distributing BSFs through male trainers/installers.  We have found that linking BSFs to a women’s hygiene course has produced a gender issue we did not predict, and now we are trying to address that.  More on that another time!