PHAST| PARTICIPATORY HYGIENE AND SANITATION TRANSFORMATION.

 

Participatory Hygiene and Sanitation Transformation (PHAST) is a participatory hygiene education methodology that seeks to help individual s and communities improve hygiene behaviours, reduce diarrhoeal disease and encourage effective community management of water and sanitation facilities (Water Supply & Sanitation Collaborative Council,  2009).

PHAST is based on another participatory methodology called SARAR, which stands for self-esteem, associative strengths, resourcefulness, action-planning and responsibility. PHAST seeks to help communities; improve hygiene behavours, prevent diarrhoeal diseases, and encourage community management of water and sanitation facilities

It does this by: demonstrating the relationship between sanitation and health status; increasing the self-esteem of community members; empowering the community to plan environmental improvements and to own and operate water and sanitation facilities. The methods for achieving these goals are called participatory methods.

What are participatory methods?

Participatory methods encourage the participation of individuals in a group process, no matter what their age, sex, social class or education background. These methods are designed to build self-esteem and a sense of responsibility for one’s decisions. They try to make the process of decision-making easy and fun.

Key definitions used in PHAST methodology

A step may contain one or more activities, aimed at achieving one overall objective

An activity is what the group works through in order to discover the information and skills necessary to reach understanding or take a decision

A toolkit is the set of materials such as drawings, that the facilitator uses as visual aids for facilitating activities.

Tools are the techniques and materials used by the facilitator to help the group work through an activity.

The PHAST approach is done in seven steps and these are shown in the figure below.

The above steps are described in detail below.

Step 1: Problem identification

This step has two activities:

1.    Community stories is designed to help the group express concerns and issues facing its community. The purposes of this activity is enable group members to identify important issues and problems facing the community, to help build a feeling of team sprint and mutual understanding and to generate group self-esteem and creativity

2.    Health problems in our community aims to focus discussion on health-related issues. The purpose is to help identify important health problems in the community and to discover which of them can be prevented through community action.

Step 2: Problem analysis

This step has for activities:

1.    Mapping water and sanitation in our community helps participants to map those water and sanitation problems which could lead to diarrhoeal disease

2.    Good and bad hygiene behaviors helps the group to look more closely at common hygiene and sanitation practices and to identify how these may be good or bad for health

3.    Investigating community practices is optional. Participants use a pocket chart to collect and analyse data on actual practices in the community.

4.    How diseases spread gets participants to look at how faeces can contaminate the environment and lead to diarrhoeal disease

At the end of this step the group should understand how some of its common everyday hygiene and sanitation practices maybe causing diarrhoel disease. It will then be able to start considering what can be done to improve these practices in order to prevent diarrhoeal disease 

Step 3: Planning for solutions

This step has three activities.

1.    Blocking the spread of disease helps group members dicover ways to prevent or “block” diarrhoeal disease from being spread via the transmission routes identified in the previous activity.

2.    Selecting the barrier helps the group to analyse the effectiveness and ease of actions to block transmission routes and choose which they want to carryout themselves

3.    Tasks of men and women in the community helps the group identify who be able to undertake additional tasks to introduce the changes necessary to prevent diarrhoeal disease.

After completing these activities, the group members should have identified various ways to prevent diarrhea in the community.

Step 4: Selecting options

This step has three activities.

1.    Choosing sanitation improvements helps the group to assess the community’s sanitation situation and decide on the changes it wants to make

2.    Choosing improved hygiene behaviours helps the group to decide which hygiene behaviours it wants to work on with the comminty

3.    Taking time for questions gives group members a chance to ask questions and obtain feedback from fellow participants, thus increasing the confidence and self-reliance of the group.

By the end of this step, the group will have made an informed choice about the changes to facilities and hygiene behaviors it wants to make.

Step 5: Planning for new facilities and behavior change

This step has three activities:

1.    Planning for change helps the group plan the action steps for implanting the solutions it has decided on

2.    Planning who does what helps the group to assign responsibility for each action step.

3.    Identifying what might go wrong enables the group to foresee possible problems and plan ways to overcome them.

Step 6: Planning and monitoring and evaluation

This step has only one activity: preparing to check our progress. In this activity, the group fills in a chart for monitoring its progress towards achieving its goals. Means are identified for measuring progress, how often this needs to be done and who will be responsible for doing it.

Step 7: Participatory evaluation

This step is carried out after the community has implemented its plan, perhaps six months or one year after the start of the programme

The participatory evaluation should involve as many people as possible from the community as well as community workers, officials, and perhaps representatives of neighboring communities. During the evaluation the group will identify:

·         How much has been done in the community

·         How much of the plan still needs to be done

·         What has been successful?

·         Any problems or difficulties encountered

·         Any corrective action that is needed