What is the value of urine? What seems like a ridiculous question has two different answers in Nepal.
Turning the regular pay-to-pee system on its head, The Sewa Nepal NGO in Darechowk, a small village in southern Nepal, pays people one rupee to use their toilets. In a country where access to proper facilities is scarce and cultural attitudes do little to discourage people from going in public, convincing people to use proper toilets can be difficult.
But this pay-for-pee system goes further than just rewarding people for using a proper toilet. Working with the EcoSan Resource Center in Darechowk the city to make the village a model for other village development committees in Nepal, Sewa Nepal also involves getting people to rethink the value of urine. The NGO teaches citizens how to use diluted urine as a fertilizer for their crops. The plan, whose signs on the nearest highway made quite a few people chuckle, seems to be working. Chitwan, the district in which Darechowk is located, was declared the 18th open-defecation free district in Nepal just two weeks ago.
The government of Kalikot, Nepal, has a different approach. When citizens go to apply for their citizenship or vote, they now need to bring a certificate that says they have a functioning toilet in their home. Responding to reports of deaths from diarrhea, the district council decided to implement the policy after a year of consideration. The district aims to make Kalikot open-defecation free by 2015.
So far, the results have been promising. While only 2% of homes in the district had toilets last year, nearly 28% now have home toilets, according to Ram Prasad Dahal, chief of District Water Supply and Sanitation Sub Division Office.
Kalikot has an interesting history of innovative policy. In 2005, the government announced that it would provide rice for every family that gave birth to a girl to counteract the social preference for baby boys.
Sanitation might not be the most glamorous sector of development to enter, but it is one of the most important. Improved sanitation can prevent diarrhea—the second leading cause of death in children under 5 and which kills 1.5 million children worldwide every year. These two initiatives, which make people realize the value in using proper facilities, are great examples of ways to get people invested in their own health and sanitation.
Photo Credit: NGO Forum
