As a pro-poor development strategy, CLTS has the potential to mobilise the
urban poor to collectively demand access to safely managed sanitation, hygiene and water services and through social accountability mechanisms which ensure no one is left behind.
In urban areas, there are additional challenges that necessitate adaptations to the traditional ‘rural’ CLTS approach.
This note summarises the potential and limitations of using a CLTS approach in peri-urban and urban environments, identifying the actions needed to take the approach to scale. It is an output from a workshop held in Addis Ababa from 13–15 June 2016, convened by the CLTS Knowledge Hub at the Institute of Development Studies, with Plan International Ethiopia.
Workshop participants identified a number of principles that underscore both rural and urban CLTS practice, including: participation; empowerment; collective behaviour change; community ownership; triggering to create demand; Natural Leaders; and open defecation free (ODF) status as an objective.
