The Government of Ghana Ministry of Sanitation and Water Resources (MSWR) has created basic sanitation guidelines to achieve 100 percent open defecation-free (ODF) status and equitable and adequate access to sanitation and hygiene for all by 2030, with special emphasis on the poor and vulnerable. This brief highlights key findings on Ghana from the 2018 research report ‘Determining the Effectiveness and Mode of Operation of Community-Led Total Sanitation: The DEMO-CLTS Study’. The brief was developed in order to make the findings and recommendations of the full report more accessible and actionable by the MSWR as well as by other development partners working in rural sanitation in Ghana.

Key findings:

• Factors that determine the success of CLTS interventions are attendance rate of participants during the triggering event, the number of community leaders participating in the triggering event, whether participants believed they would receive rewards like installation of water wells and materials for toilets, and the number of follow-up visits provided by facilitators weeks after triggering.
• Households that socially identify strongly with their communities are more likely to construct latrines after CLTS interventions.
• Combining CLTS with other behavior change models did not significantly increase intervention effects.