Designing a Project that WORKS

For the last few months I’ve been doing my best to design a Composting Latrine project with my community.  I have done a lot of Health Promotion and Bucket Latrine demonstrations in the past, which has raised consciousness of the community.  It has also helped me find my current Health Committee President, Atilio Guianora, who took a 3 day Project Management & Leadership course with me.

But how do I then translate a few educated and motivated people into developing infrastructure for an entire community, and continue to grow leaders?  If I were to follow the development norm in rural Panamá, I would solicit a big latrine project for everyone.  If I wanted to be a bit more strict, I could ask people to come to meetings and only those who came to meetings would then be part of the project.  That may work, but there are too many factors to make things go wrong:  people not showing up to work days, not viewing the project as their own but as “Peace Corps Project”, and the worst is that they might not even use the latrine.

I’m more interested in initiating a Community Action Cycle.  Designing a project that can be run by community members - first along with me on a small scale, and then independently on a larger scale. 

Initiating Behavior Change

In order to improve health, you’ve got to get people to change their behavior.  Placing infrastructure in front of them won’t do it.  Behavior change needs to come from within a few, and can come from the rest following a good example.  I thought it would be best to start with only a few latrines for those who chose to sit on a Health Committee.  I would train the Health Committee on Sanitation issues and how to design a project.  They would be the example for the community not only on how to build, maintain, and use the latrine, BUT how to participate in a community wide project.  When they see their neighbor using something new, they will hopefully be more interested in having their own

Making Things Exclusive

Why does Steve Jobs only release a limited amount of iPhones at first?  Exclusivity.  Release a few, intrigue the many. I am hoping that by only a few members having a composting latrine, the rest of the community will be interested in having one as well.