Community-Led Total Sanitation Methodology Training Course

Course overview

Open defecation, unsafe child faeces disposal, weak latrine use and failed sanitation campaigns persist when programmes focus on hardware targets rather than collective behaviour, local leadership and post-triggering follow-up. Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) gives WASH practitioners a structured way to facilitate communities’ own analysis of faecal-oral contamination, support locally led action, and verify progress without prescribing household solutions or creating harmful pressure. This course addresses the practical challenge of applying CLTS ethically, consistently and at scale across rural, peri-urban and humanitarian programme settings.

Participants learn the CLTS process from pre-triggering assessment through triggering, post-triggering follow-up, sanitation marketing linkages and open-defecation-free (ODF) verification. They practise transect walks, social mapping, defecation-area mapping, shit calculation, contamination-route analysis, natural leader identification and community action planning. The course also covers inclusion, gender, disability, child safeguarding, do-no-harm facilitation, data collection, monitoring indicators and the distinction between community claims, programme monitoring and independent ODF verification.

Delivery combines instructor-led method demonstrations with facilitated role-plays, case analysis, mapping workshops and use of KoboToolbox for field data capture. Participants work through a realistic district sanitation scenario, make facilitation and escalation decisions, and receive feedback against a CLTS quality checklist. They leave with a tailored CLTS implementation pack: a pre-triggering plan, triggering agenda, follow-up tracker, inclusive community action-plan template, monitoring dashboard specification and ODF verification checklist ready to adapt for their programme.

The course is designed for staff responsible for planning, facilitating, supervising or assuring rural sanitation and hygiene interventions. It is equally valuable for managers who need field teams to achieve credible, equitable sanitation outcomes while protecting communities from coercive or target-driven implementation.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Conduct a CLTS pre-triggering assessment using household, institutional and stakeholder evidence
• Facilitate social mapping, transect walks and defecation-area mapping without prescribing sanitation solutions
• Apply shit calculation and faecal-oral contamination-route analysis to support community self-analysis
• Identify natural leaders and produce an inclusive community sanitation action plan
• Design a post-triggering follow-up schedule with household progress, equity and slippage indicators
• Use KoboToolbox forms to collect, validate and summarise CLTS monitoring data
• Apply do-no-harm, safeguarding and disability-inclusion controls to CLTS facilitation decisions
• Prepare an evidence-based ODF verification checklist and referral plan for unresolved risks

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• WASH Programme Officers — who plan and supervise community sanitation interventions
• CLTS Facilitators — who lead triggering and follow-up sessions with communities
• Public Health Officers — who need to connect sanitation behaviour change with disease-risk reduction
• NGO Field Coordinators — who manage implementation quality across multiple communities
• Government Environmental Health Practitioners — who support sanitation planning and ODF verification
• MEAL Officers — who design monitoring systems and assess whether sanitation outcomes are sustained

Requirements and prerequisites

This is a foundation-to-intermediate course and does not require prior CLTS certification or specialist sanitation engineering knowledge. Participants should be comfortable working with community groups, reading simple programme data and contributing to facilitated case discussions. Familiarity with basic WASH concepts such as safe water, handwashing, latrine use and faecal-oral disease transmission is helpful, but not essential; these concepts are refreshed on day one. A laptop with spreadsheet and web-browser access is recommended for the KoboToolbox and monitoring exercises. No prior experience with KoboToolbox, GIS, statistical software or ODF verification is required. Complete beginners should expect practical facilitation rehearsal rather than technical latrine design training.

Training methodology

The five-day programme uses short instructor-led inputs to establish the CLTS sequence, then moves quickly into applied practice. Participants analyse field scenarios, conduct tabletop transect walks, create community maps, rehearse triggering conversations and assess facilitation choices against ethical practice criteria. Small groups build KoboToolbox data forms, review mock follow-up records and test ODF evidence against verification requirements. Daily feedback links each exercise to operational decisions. On the final day, each participant completes an application plan and implementation pack for a defined community, district or programme portfolio.

Course outline

Day 1: CLTS foundations and ethical programme design

• CLTS principles, theory of change and limits of the approach
• Sanitation behaviours, faecal-oral transmission and public-health risk
• Differences between CLTS, sanitation marketing and hardware-led programming
• Pre-triggering assessment objectives and community entry protocols
• Stakeholder mapping for local government, leaders and service providers
• Do-no-harm facilitation, informed participation and safeguarding boundaries
• Gender, disability, age and marginalisation in community sanitation analysis

Workshop: Participants assess a district sanitation brief and produce a pre-triggering stakeholder map with inclusion and safeguarding risks.

Day 2: Triggering tools and facilitation practice

• Social mapping of households, water points and sanitation facilities
• Defecation-area mapping and route identification
• Transect walk planning, observation prompts and respectful documentation
• Shit calculation using locally meaningful assumptions
• Faecal-oral contamination-route mapping and barrier analysis
• Facilitating community self-realisation without lecturing or directing
• Natural leader identification and management of dominant voices

Workshop: In rotating roles, participants conduct a simulated triggering session and produce a community map, contamination analysis and natural-leader list.

Day 3: From triggering to inclusive community action

• Post-triggering momentum, follow-up cadence and facilitator responsibilities
• Community action-plan design with dates, responsibilities and local resources
• Household segmentation for equity-sensitive follow-up
• Linking self-supply options with sanitation products and local suppliers
• Managing requests for subsidies, materials and external construction
• Addressing renters, land tenure, shared facilities and difficult terrain
• Referral pathways for households requiring disability, protection or technical support

Workshop: Teams convert a triggering scenario into an inclusive 90-day community action plan with follow-up visits, referrals and escalation points.

Day 4: Monitoring, learning and ODF verification

• CLTS results framework: outputs, outcomes, slippage and sustainability indicators
• Household observation protocols and respondent-interview triangulation
• KoboToolbox form design for follow-up and verification data
• Data-quality checks, consent prompts and offline data-collection workflows
• WHO/UNICEF JMP sanitation service ladders and indicator interpretation
• ODF verification evidence, independent checks and declaration governance
• Using monitoring findings to target coaching and corrective action

Workshop: Participants build a KoboToolbox follow-up form and review a mock dataset to produce an ODF verification recommendation.

Day 5: Quality assurance and field implementation planning

• CLTS facilitator competency standards and observation checklists
• Supervision visits, coaching conversations and corrective-action logs
• Managing coercion, false claims and target-driven implementation pressure
• Sphere Handbook sanitation standards in humanitarian and displacement contexts
• Adapting CLTS sequencing for peri-urban, emergency and fragile settings
• Budgeting field facilitation, monitoring and verification activities
• Programme rollout plans, risk registers and management reporting

Workshop: Each participant presents a CLTS implementation pack for their setting and receives peer and instructor review against a quality-assurance checklist.

Tools & standards covered

KoboToolbox, WHO/UNICEF JMP Service Ladders, Sphere Handbook, Community-Led Total Sanitation: A Handbook on Facilitation of CLTS

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions