Community engagement in sanitation: A landscape review

Despite its perceived importance, the evidence suggests that community engagement in all sectors of humanitarian response is often limited and rarely monitored or evaluated. Sanitation projects may involve the community only in the construction phase as a paid labour force, or as a cashfor-work initiative. One challenge for tracking the use and effectiveness of community engagement is that its meaning varies across the sector. Critically, agencies do not always define the aim of community engagement in their responses, even though it fundamentally affects how and what they do. Documented methods of community engagement in sanitation typically refer to standard participatory approaches, but were either used later in a response or did not specify the timing at all. Common community-based methods, adapted for WASH, include focus group discussions, community mapping, transect walks and key informant interviews. Whilst interviewees were positive about the benefits of community engagement, most commented that, in the first few weeks, it involved little more than a few conversations with groups of women and men, with people found at churches, mosques and informal gatherings, and with key informants from the community. Interviews with key informants for this review often stated that some level of engagement is always possible, despite the pressure to act fast. Even a few hours of basic consultation, done well, using respectful, open questioning with a limited (but representative) slice of the population, can positively influence sanitation design, community acceptance and ownership.