PHAST
Participatory Hygiene and Sanitation
Transformation
Rotary International Conference, Lisbon, 2013
Mayling Simpson, Consultant
Colorado, USA
Community planning meetings
often start out like this.
With PHAST, they end up like this……..
And like this – led by the community
What is PHAST?
• A participatory approach to working
with communities on sanitation,
hygiene and water.
• A methodology based on SARAR
• Developed from field-testing 199496 Africa, Asia, Latin America, USA
SARAR nurtures:
• Self-esteem
• Associative strengths
• Resourcefulness
• Action-planning
• Responsibility
Underlying principles of SARAR
• People will solve their own problems best in a
participatory group process.
• A group collectively will have enough
information and experience to begin to
address its own problems.
The aim of PHAST
• To empower communities to manage their
water and to control sanitation-related
diseases.
• By promoting health awareness and
understanding which leads to environmental
and behavioral improvements.
How PHAST works
• PHAST uses methods and materials that
stimulate the participation of women, men
and children in the development process.
• It uses trained extension workers and graphic
materials that reflect the culture and
characteristics of communities.
Underlying Principles of PHAST
Lasting change in people’s behavior requires
health awareness and understanding.
To change their behaviors, people must believe
that better hygiene and sanitation will lead to
better health and better living.
Concept-based learning
• Concept-based learning is more effective in
bringing about sustainable change than
message-based teaching.
• PHAST is based upon concept-based learning.
Bringing people together to plan
changes
• Assessing their own knowledge base.
• Investigating their own environmental
situation.
• Visualizing a future scenario.
• Analyzing constraints to change
• Planning for change
• Implementing change.
Community Development Principles of
PHAST
• Communities should determine their own
priorities for disease prevention.
• People collectively possess an enormous
depth of experience and knowledge.
• Communities are capable of arriving at a
consensus on hygiene behaviors and
sanitation systems.
Community Development Principles of
PHAST (continued)
• When people understand why improved
sanitation and hygiene is to their advantage,
they will act.
• All people are capable of understanding that
faeces carry disease and can learn to trace and
describe the faecal-oral route.
• Communities can identify appropriate barriers
to block this transmission.
PHAST- 7 steps
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
1. Problem identification
2. Problem analysis
3. Planning for solutions
4. Selecting the options
5. Planning for new facilities and behavior change
6. Planning for monitoring and evaluation
7. Participatory evaluation
Tools and Techniques
• Role plays of behaviors, illnesses
• Community walks and maps
• Making the feces transmission routes using
drawings
• Sorting drawings of good and bad hygiene
behaviors
• Sorting drawings of sanitation options
• Selecting what the community wants
fingers
Hand
washing
flies
Cooking
faeces
Pit toilet
VIP, flush or
ecological toilet
food
Washing
fields
fluids
mouth
Boiling or
disinfection
Pictures instead of words
• PHAST uses drawings to illustrate ideas so that
illiterate people can participate.
Making a Community Map - Eritrea
Principles on decision-making
• The people closest to the problem are those
best able to find the solution.
• The community understands its own situation
best.
• Those who create decisions will be committed
to following them through.
Principles on decision-making
(continued)
• The more of their own material and financial
resources people invest in change, the greater
will be their commitment to following it
through and sustaining it.
• Self-esteem is a prerequisite to decisionmaking and follow-through.
Key factors needed for effective
participation
• Respect for people’s knowledge and ideas
• Faith in the creative potential of people
• Minimum of structure; maximum of
participation
• Loyalty to the group
• Commitment to helping people express
themselves.
Is PHAST successful?
YES
PHAST has been applied in over 20 countries:
Latin America, East Africa, West Africa, Former
Soviet Republics, and USA.
Getting Ready to do PHAST
• Facilitator training – 2 weeks
• Artist to make drawings of local environments
and cultures
Requirements for Success
•
•
•
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Training of facilitators
Plenty of time with the community
Willingness to budget the software sufficiently
Allowing the community to own the process
and project
• Do this at the beginning, not at the end!
CHAST
 Children’s Hygiene
And Sanitation
Training
 Primary School
children
 ages 5 to 12
History
 Grew out of PHAST
 Created in 2004 for Somalia. (Caritas
Swiss & Luxembourg)
 Adopted by Gov. of Kenya in 2007
CHAST Tools
 3 story characters
 1 or more puppets
(with names)
 Colored posters
 Role plays
 Puppet shows
 Card games
 Songs
 Art
5 Steps for Children’s Hygiene Behaviors
 Introduction
 Problem Identification
 Problem Analysis
 Practicing Good Behavior
 Monitoring
Further reading
(see handout)
• PHAST Theory: Participatory Hygiene and
Sanitation Transformation: A new approach to
working with communities, 1996, WHO.
• PHAST Practice: PHAST Step-by-step Guide: A
participatory approach for the control of diarrhoeal
disease, 1998, WHO
• CHAST – A Practical Guide, 2004, Caritas
Switzerland