From the 11^th to the 15^th March 2013, the third annual review meeting of Plan’s Pan African programme Empowering self-help sanitation of rural and peri-urban communities and schools in Africa took place in Lilongwe, Malawi. Participants from 7 of the 8 programme countries as well as representatives of the partner organisations (Plan Netherlands, IRC and IDS) spent the week discussing progress of the 5 year project as well as key emerging issues, questions and next steps. The results of the project’s 2012 mid term review were also presented and gave food for thought for adjustments and priorities for the remaining 2 years of the programme.

Here are some participants' reflections on Day 2

Simulekwa Sifaya, WATSAN Project Coordinator, Plan Zambia

March 12th, 2013 has been yet another exciting day at the Pan-African CLTS Annual Review Meeting in Lilongwe Malawi. I would call it a "One Pager Day".We begun the day with a recap on the previuos day's deliberations. We spent most of the day discussing key issues arising from the previuos day's presentations and discussions. Key areas of discussion included School Led Total Sanitation(SLTS), Natural Leaders' networks, children's participation in CLTS, Pre-triggering, Sub-structure collapse, linkage between water and sanitation, overcoming incentives to volunteers, urban enforcement, Review and Reflection Meetings, Loans and Savings Groups, Intergration of CLTS with other programs and other programs.
One of the key subjects that sparked a lot of discussion was on SLTS with particular attention to parameters for measurement of schools to be ODF, and involvement of children in CLTS. We wanted to have a common understanding on what should constitute an ODF school. Another area of discussion was whether it was possible for a village to become ODF when a school/schools in that particular community was not ODF.
One notable area that attracted a lot of my attention and needs further research is the issue of incorporation of people with special needs in the CLTS program.
The day, was basically spent on issues and production of One Pagers. We ended the day with a short briefing concerning the following day's field day.

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Marielle Snel, IRC

This has been an interesting day in which we have focused on specific issues around CLTS. We see in sanitation that there are five issues that need to be highlighted:  demand creation, behaviour change, total sanitation, sanitation chain and sanitation ladder/supply chain.   Based on the discussions from yesterday, a number of key issues emerged to focus on further development, namely: sustainability, sanitation monitoring, incentives/subsidy issues, integration with other sector, M&E and data, natural leaders, special needs, partnership, school sanitation and role of children. We spent much of the day focus on developing one- pagers around these issues.

It is also interesting to cite that the Plan country offices with IDS and IRC are more in tune with each other in terms of being honest to reflect on the challenges around CLTS, innovative solutions and also how CLTS fits into the overall sanitation approaches. The power point presented by me yesterday on lessons learnt from the Pan-Africa program, reflected on some of the key challenges and innovative solutions in the pre-triggering, triggering and post-triggering stage.  We briefly reflected on the sanitation life cycle presented in the last slide and which will be further discussed on Thursday. We are looking forward to the field trip tomorrow which brings some of our ideas/thoughts into reality and more because that is where it really counts!