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MDG-7: Ensure Environmental SustainabilityMDG target 7.C: Halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainableaccess to safe drinking water and basic sanitationConstraint:Insufficient Financing & Community Mobilization for School LatrinesInsufficient funding and community awareness and mobilization to build and maintain schoollatrinesNepal’s School-Led Total Sanitation (SLTS) aims to be a complete package for school andcommunity sanitation and hygiene. It capitalizes on the crucial role that children can play as changeagents and promoters of sanitation and hygiene in schools and communities. Through participatoryapproaches, motivational tools, flexibility for innovation and building ownership at the local level, SLTSis accelerating latrine coverage across Nepal.Components:• Communities construct and maintain their latrines• Provide masonry training, establishing a revolving fund and providing a reward for achievingOpen Defecation Free status.• Enhance personal, household and environmental hygiene behaviours• Engage children in development activities, thereby enhancing their personal and leadershipskills• Increase ownership of schools and communities over hygiene and sanitation activities• Build strong school-community partnerships that enable sustainability of hygiene and sanitationfacilitiesResults:• The SLTS approach enhances the sense of dignity, identity and pride among local stakeholdersand is sparking an outward momentum for neighboring villages and districts to follow the OpenDefecation Free (ODF) approach. At the policy level, it is attracting attention and support frommultidisciplinary sectors.• SLTS has reached approximately 90,000 households and 500,000 people in 15 districts through300 schools and surrounding communities, promoting sanitation and hygiene by constructinglatrines in schools and communities.• Over 1,000 settlements from 300 school catchment areas and 23 village development committeeareas have been declared Open Defecation Free through the SLTS programme.• Over 1,000 school headmasters and teachers, 8,000 child club members and several local leadershave been trained in SLTS, of whom nearly 50 percent are women. District Sanitation SteeringCommittees have been established and trained in SLTS facilitation in 15 districts.• SLTS has been incorporated in the Nepal Sanitation Master Plan, developed in 2009, and theGovernment of Nepal is replicating the SLTS programme in all 75 districts. Targeted budget lineshave been established for sanitation at the national and district levels. A 25 percent additionalbudgetary grant is given to villages that become open-defecation-free and have a child-friendlyenvironment and facilities.Key Elements of Success:• Empowered children are a dynamic and ultimately powerful force for catalyzing behaviouralchange in schools, families and communities with respect to water and sanitation. SLTS takeswhat children learn one step further, translating their knowledge of good sanitation and hygienepractice into advocacy and action on behalf of community health.• SLTS promotes creative, non-subsidy-based, financing strategies to assist poorer people, such asloans from revolving funds, basket funds and local-level cooperatives to construct the latrines inevery household. In many school catchment areas, fifty-fifty matching funds that provide loans tohouseholds have been established. Child clubs and village development committees provide othertypes of material and social support to ensure that all community members are able to constructand maintain a latrine. Local-level resource mobilization enhances community responsibility andMDG Good Practices 67