Participatory establishment of water and sanitation facilities management unit at village level

One expensive lesson of past sanitation projects in Indonesia is the lack of continuity, both physical and behavior changes. Many facilities have been built, but when broken are not repaired, with a return to previous less hygienic practices. An approach was developed to create the infrastructure with sustained behavior change through establishing management units for water and sanitation facilities at village level in a participatory manner. Steps to achieve these are triggering changes in behavior with the Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) approach, planning made by community, conducting maintenance, monitoring, evaluation and improvement of facilities. Performance indicators are the provision of the facility management unit, personnel managers, village regulations, a good funding system, scheduled regular monitoring, and good recording and reporting. In the project achievement of these performance indicators varied greatly, there was a slight decline in functionality from year to year. Some conditions that caused this include: lack of community participation, which means difficulty in making repairs, lack of a participatory process, lack of interest on the part of the head of the village, and so on. The development of the management unit for water and sanitation schemes took place in 561 villages where 100% had a provision for facility management unit, 100% had a personnel manager, 71% had a system of funding, 70% had village regulations. For the villages which operate in compliance with indicators, all the facilities constructed are used and properly functioning. [authors abstract ]