Engaging with government to scale-up community-based total sanitation in Indonesia

In 2007 Plan International Indonesia (Plan Indonesia) adopted Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) as its only approach for implementing sanitation projects in its 9 Program Unit sites. The adoption of CLTS represented a new paradigm: sanitation was to be approached through a behaviour-change lens, focussed upon generating bottom-up demand for toilets, as opposed to a top-down, service-provision, subsidy model. In 2009 Plan Indonesia was the first international NGO in the country to embark upon a massive scale-up of its CLTS program in partnership with national, district and sub-district government. The aim of this scale-up is to achieve open-defecation free (ODF) status across 66 of the poorest sub-districts in Indonesia by 2014, and also to develop a replicable-model for further government-led CLTS projects in neighbouring priority districts. This paper outlines the process being undertaken to achieve this scale-up, the key factors that have enabled it and the lessons learned so far.