IMAGINE A SOUTH AFRICA
WHERE EVERYONE HAS ACCESS
TO CLEAN AND SAFE
BASIC SANITATION
WORKING TOWARDS A BETTER FUTURE
Our solutions
We work with the government and communities to provide sustainable water, hygiene, and sanitation solutions. Although we work in various environments, most of our work has been at schools.
Water
Hygiene
Sanitation
For too many South African citizens, easy access to fresh, clean water is not a reality. In some rural areas, people have to walk kilometres to the nearest source of water, fill a container with all they can carry, and make the long journey home again.
Good, or even basic, hygiene is critical to prevent illness and helping people lead long, healthy lives. It prevents children missing school and adults ways of earning a living. Yet, important hygiene practices are difficult without access to water or consumables, both of which are commonplace in rural South Africa.
We aim to work with the government to secure funding to build and maintain safe, hygienic, and environmentally friendly toilets that replicate the Sulabh International model adapted to the context of SA.
Renovation and building of school toilet facilities
In partnership with donor organisations, we renovate existing facilities or build new toilet facilities at schools. There are a number of criteria for such interventions that we have adapted, based on our experience with 86 schools throughout South Africa.
Challenges
As part of our commitment to ensuring access to safe, clean, and environmentally friendly toilet facilities, we would be remiss if we did not focus on South Africa’s most vulnerable demographic group: our children. We encounter many challenges to the provisioning of toilet facilities at schools.
Through our experience, we have stringent criteria in place to help identify those schools that have the right security, leadership, and community to take responsibility for their children’s educational needs. There are many more criteria that contribute to the success of renovating existing school toilets, including the location of the toilets, follow-up programmes with the children and teachers, access to water and electricity, and the school’s ability to maintain and clean the facilities. Many schools don’t have these resources available and they are the ones in dire need. Our solutions take all of this into consideration and we work with the leadership until we are satisfied the solutions we provide will be sustainable.
- Despite the mandate to eradicate pit toilets at schools by 2013, many schools still have pit toilets.
- Many schools do not have any toilet facilities at all and children are using surrounding fields, which leads to pollution and unhygienic conditions.
- Toilet facilities are vandalised and destroyed in many schools, making them unsafe and unhygienic.
- Children see toilets as unsafe and scary places and so are reluctant to use the toilets.
- Many children suffer from gastrointestinal illnesses caused by poor hygiene and the poor condition of sanitation facilities. This leads to absenteeism and impacts their education.
- There are inadequate waste-disposal mechanisms, so girls are unable to privately dispose of used sanitary products effectively. This leads to further challenges of absenteeism, unsafe disposal, pollution, and contamination.
- Leadership structures in schools do not see the importance of sanitation and hygiene on student growth and development.
Our solution to these challenges is to renovate existing school toilets. To date, we have renovated a total of 83 school toilets.
Once a school toilet has been renovated, we need to provide cleaning services and products to support the sustainability of the toilets. This requires community involvement and government intervention. SISASSS-SA is fighting for sustainable solutions to the school-toilet crisis and is calling on the government and communities to support this initiative.
When we renovate or build a school toilet facility, we make use of local community members, including the provision of janitorial services, so supporting the work creation. When we implement the Sulabh twin-composter technology, we transfer this knowledge to local builders who could use the technology to construct household toilets.
- Despite the mandate to eradicate pit toilets at schools by 2013, many schools still have pit toilets.
- Many schools do not have any toilet facilities at all and children are using surrounding fields, which leads to pollution and unhygienic conditions.
- Toilet facilities are vandalised and destroyed in many schools, making them unsafe and unhygienic.
- Children see toilets as unsafe and scary places and so are reluctant to use the toilets.
- Many children suffer from gastrointestinal illnesses caused by poor hygiene and the poor condition of sanitation facilities. This leads to absenteeism and impacts their education.
- There are inadequate waste-disposal mechanisms, so girls are unable to privately dispose of used sanitary products effectively. This leads to further challenges of absenteeism, unsafe disposal, pollution, and contamination.
- Leadership structures in schools do not see the importance of sanitation and hygiene on student growth and development.
Our solution to these challenges is to renovate existing school toilets. To date, we have renovated a total of 83 school toilets.
Through our experience, we have stringent criteria in place to help identify those schools that have the right security, leadership, and community to take responsibility for their children’s educational needs. There are many more criteria that contribute to the success of renovating existing school toilets, including the location of the toilets, follow-up programmes with the children and teachers, access to water and electricity, and the school’s ability to maintain and clean the facilities. Many schools don’t have these resources available and they are the ones in dire need. Our solutions take all of this into consideration and we work with the leadership until we are satisfied the solutions we provide will be sustainable.
Once a school toilet has been renovated, we need to provide cleaning services and products to support the sustainability of the toilets. This requires community involvement and government intervention. SICAS-SA is fighting for sustainable solutions to the school-toilet crisis and is calling on the government and communities to support this initiative.
When we renovate or build a school toilet facility, we make use of local community members, including the provision of janitorial services, so supporting the work creation. When we implement the Sulabh twin-composter technology, we transfer this knowledge to local builders who could use the technology to construct household toilets.