Community Sanitation and School-Based Hygiene Promotion in Tangerang, Indonesia
Challenge
Indonesia, like many other Asian countries, is facing a sanitation crisis. With organized sanitation systems for only the largest city centers, rural and peri-urban areas typically rely on unimproved pit toilets, toilets that discharge untreated waste directly to surface water, or open defecation. Often, the same streams and rivers that receive these wastes are also being used for clothes washing, bathing and other domestic purposes. The result is a very high incidence of waterborne disease and an annual cost of $6.3 billion as estimated by the World Bank of $6.3 billion.
Initiative
RTI International, with funding provided by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Taiwan, and the Institute of Integrated Social and Economic Development in Indonesia is addressing this problem through a decentralized approach to wastewater treatment in the city of Tangerang, just outside of metropolitan Jakarta. Through a simple and efficient community-based planning process and a training program for local masons, toilets and community wash facilities with proper wastewater treatment have been installed. The project follows the community sanitation, or SANIMAS approach, a well-proven model in Indonesia.
Innovation
This program takes the SANIMAS approach one step further by combining community-based sanitation initiatives with simultaneous hygiene promotion programs for schools. Teaching appropriate sanitation behavior to children is an effective way of driving behavior change in adults, so the school-based hygiene education program serves as a driver for behavior change communication in the community. These programs are timed with the completion of the toilet and community wash infrastructure, so community members have the appropriate facilities to put new sanitation concepts into practice. The local government is also involved by helping to remove the old toilets that discharged directly to the river.
Pondok Jaya School Principal Ibu Srianingsih: “Providing safe toilets is our best tool for improving attendance while providing a platform for teaching and promoting sanitation and hygiene for our school and community”.
Results
This program serves as a complementary model to the SANIMAS approach for enhanced community and school-based sanitation improvement. The newly trained masons provide a trained workforce for scaling up and replicating in other areas of their community.
Contact
For more information about RTI's sanitation initiatives in Indonesia, contact Myles Elledge: melledge 
rti.org.
