Resources / Reporting on urine diversion in South Africa 12 years on

Summary

Richard Holden reports on the urine diversion toilets build in South Africa 12 years ago.

Full text

I recently spoke to a colleague of mine, Riana Terrblanche, who had returned to Namaqualand on the West Coast of South Africa, and had visited the communities where we had started work 12 years ago and first introduced urine diversion at scale in South Africa.

Urine Diversion was introduced in the area as it was impossible, in many places, to dig pits for VIPs. Apart from one village, which really is a social basket case, all the toilets are still functioning and well maintained. However, what really makes us proud is how the project workers have progressed with careers since the project closed down, many with full time jobs and others now running small contracting businesses.

This epitomizes the Mvula Trust model where money and responsibility was put into the community hands. It also epitomizes the SARAR philosophy and shows that if you really believe that the community can do work for themselves, respect them, give them the space to learn, give support where required they will succeed, not just in the project, but after the project has been completed as well. If you treat SARAR like a slogan on a T-shirt, and throw it off when you get home it does not work. If it is in your heart, it works.