Good practices for Social inclusion - Case studies and summary

Participatory methods used with neighbourhood groups of women and girls and men
and boys are more effective in improving conditions and practices because they offer
opportunities for horizontal learning, including between schoolchildren and adults, the
identification of bad conditions and habits to change and good ones to reinforce, and
information exchange, decision-making and peer influence on ways of making these
changes. Depending on socio-cultural conditions, such sessions can be mix or
separate for males and females.
Fig. 19 Conventional method
Fig. 20 Review of drawings
Fig. 21 Sorted in priorities for
action planning
An illustration in case was the hygiene promotion activity carried out with males and
females of a poor neighbourhood in Banjarmasin. Prior to the session, the team had
used felt pens to prepare simple½ A4 line drawings (Fig.20) (with more time
drawings can also be made by community youth/children/adults). The slips showed a
range of locally specific risky and safe hygiene and sanitation conditions and
practices and promotion methods, such as brushing teeth and washing kitchen utensils
with river water. In two sub-groups in the local mosque, the women and men first laid
the drawings out in two lines on the floor: good and bad situations and practices.
During the exercise group members discussed risks until a consensus was achieved,
with children telling what they had learned in school. Having completed, the reasons
for laying a drawing in a good or bad line were reviewed. The groups then subdivided
the two lines into four: good habits/conditions already and not yet present and bad
ones no more or still present (Fig. 21).
Finally, the two groups chose three priorities for action from the two second lines (not
yet practiced good and still practiced bad). The men and women then visited each
other‘s displays and discussed their priorities. Both groups had selected helicopter
toilets as one priority, the men chose community solid waste management and more
active participation of their children on hygiene, the women concluded that they
should become more active in local planning if they want to get better hygiene and
sanitation.
The cities‘ strategy for hygiene promotion is to train the Posyandu (health post)
volunteers to organise and run Community Health Clubs in poor urban communities.
Clubs will be either mixed or separate for women and men, depending on the local
culture. The clubs will have 20 sessions of two hours each to strengthen local health
and hygiene knowledge and practices. This strategy, which was proven to be costeffective
in Zimbabwe 39 , is planned to be tested in the urban sanitation program with
the following proposed modifications:
39
See case in http://www.irc.nl/content/download/23457/267837/file/TOP1_HygPromo_05.pdf
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