101 is the Number

Nearly 90 percent of the total households attended the 101Community Development for Health (CDH) workshops in Pemagatshel district in Eastern Bhutan as part of the Sustainable Sanitation and Hygiene for All Programme (SSH4A). As part of an effort to help household mobilise resources and make choices/decisions as a family, the two day workshops were organised at the village level and facilitated by local level government staff with support from SNV and our local partner LNW.

The teams work alongside the government staff to coach and support as they build their confidence and skills. The workshop, geared towards creating demand at the household level, marks the completion of the most intensive phase of the current SSH4A programme which aims at 100% access to improved sanitation coverage district wide by 2013.

The central message to CDH is one of community participation and empowerment, aimed at mobilising collective action to improve the sanitation and hygiene situation for these villages. And change is already underway. Households are mobilizing their resources, consulting their family members and making choices/decisions.

Some households have already got their toilets built and being used. Says Choki, a woman from Gasharee village, "I have never had in my wildest of dreams that I would ever get to hold a pen in my 89 years of living, but here came this Health (CDH) workshop and I learned to draw and see how nice it was to hold a pen". And the interesting part of Ms. Choki's experience was that she took the drawings she made as part of the participatory CDH workshop to show it to her husband back home—Empowerment!

The 101 workshops have been conducted over a period of 3 months seeking to create the sanitation movement supported by hygiene promotion and sanitation supplies and services as part of the longer 2 year programme.