UNICEF-RSPN: Capacity Building for UNICEF’s Sanitation Program at Scale in Pakistan Phase I

More than 43 million people defecate in the open in Pakistan. With just 45 percent of the population (29 percent rural and 72 percent urban) having access to improved sanitation, Pakistan faces a major challenge in achieving the MDG target of 64 percent access to improved sanitation by 2015. Diarrhoea remains the leading cause of mortality for children under five where 116,013 children under the age of five die due to diarrhoea each year, translating into the loss of life of 13 Pakistani children per hour.

The Sanitation Program at Scale in Pakistan (SPSP) is a UNICEF program designed to achieve the Millenium Development Goals for sanitation. The first phase of this program was implemented in 14 districts across Pakistan, including FATA agencies.

RSPN was tasked with building the capacity of UNICEF’s implementing partners, using Pakistan’s Approach to Total Sanitation (PATS). The Pakistan Approach to Total Sanitation is a unique compilation of ideas, services and products designed to achieve the goal of total sanitation. Ranging from sanitation products; services and behavior change to linking communities with technical service providers at the supply side and micro finance institutions to access loans, the approach ensures that people have the knowledge, technical skills, and the resources to access modern sanitation.

Some major activities and achievements of the first phase were:

• Training manuals were developed for each cadre of staff, i.e., social mobilizers, school teachers, community resource persons, masons, sanitary entrepreneurs and merchants and village sanitation committees
• RSPN trained 19 master trainers who were placed throughout the country to build the capacity of partners and staff. These master trainers worked trained 322 social organizers on how to implement the project using the Pakistan Approach to Total Sanitation. RSPN also trained 1,445 community resource persons on community led total sanitation, 1,093 masons on latrine technology, 775 teachers on SLTS, and 434 entrepreneurs on sanitation marketing and entrepreneurship
• RSPN’s master trainers also provided support to the implementing partners in training 214 government officials and helped build strong linkages with the Public Health Engineering Department and the Education Department for the realization of program goals
• RSPN extended support in training 137 Village Sanitation Committee
• RSPN was also responsible for on the job coaching and mentoring of the implementing partners as well as for documenting success stories.
• Under the same programme, RSPN developed IEC material on Menstrual Hygiene Management and partnered with UNICEF in conducting a research study on MHM in six schools of Rawalpindi and Swabi
• RSPN and UNICEF joined hands to celebrate the first ever UN declared World Toilet Day in collaboration with the Higher Education commission of Pakistan
• RSPN was an active participant of the South Asia Conference on Sanitation (SACOSAN) 2014

Phase 1 of this project spanned a duration of 11 months and was concluded in February 2014. For information on Phase 2, please visit the current projects section of this website.