Rural Cambodia is home to the largest proportion of individuals practicing open defecation in Southeast Asia. The Cambodia Rural Sanitation and Hygiene Improvement Program (CRSHIP) has sought to address harmful sanitation practices by increasing access to improved sanitation and promoting proper hygiene in rural target areas.

CRSHIP implementing partners (IPs) utilise participatory development approaches such as Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS), School-WASH, and Sanitation Marketing to increase awareness of the negative consequences of open defecation while promoting ownership of and defecation in latrines as the new normative behaviour.

This research summary voices the importance of social context and collective action as a mediating factor between programme implementation and its success. CRSHIP assesses the social factors that influenced sanitation uptake, indicating the efficiency of communities participating together with local community leaders or NGOs to work cohesively in achieving their sanitation and health goals.