Community Leave No One Behind: Handbook For Practitioners

Approach Guidelines
June 2021

Community-Leave No One Behind (CLNOB) is a new participatory approach to identify both challenges and solutions in communities’ journeys towards ODF-S.

It has been designed to be integrated into Phase II of the Swachh Bharat Mission-Grameen (SBM-G). The government of India has issued the guidelines for Phase II of SBM-G, of which one of the guiding principles is ensuring that no one is left behind. CLNOB demonstrates a way to achieve this goal. It encourages communities to identify gaps in sanitation coverage and use and promote actions they can take themselves.

CLNOB builds on experiences with Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) and with the Swachh Bharat Mission-Gramin (SBM-G)’s ‘Community Approaches to Sanitation (CAS)’. These approaches have helped communities towards achieving open defecation free (ODF) environments; however, it has been acknowledged that ODF status has deficiencies.

The purposes of this handbook are two-fold: first to inform policymakers and stakeholders at all levels about this new initiative, and second to provide guidance to facilitators and practitioners for CLNOB implementation. This handbook is a living document and will be updated and refined after more field experiences are conducted. It is based on limited experience from a small pilot carried out between June and October 2020 during the challenging environment of the COVID-19 pandemic.

For Annexes on suggested talking points, a sustainability register, case studies and information on informed consent and data protection, click here to download (PDF)

Three prerakhs (facilitators) share their experience of using CLNOB approaches in 200 villages across 5 districts in India in the SLH blog.

Find out more about the CLNOB pilot in India below (Hindi audio and English subtitles)

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