Around 70 people completed training in Community-Led Total Led Sanitation (CLTS) in Torit, South Sudan last week as part of an initiative to make the entire country open defecation free by 2030.
South Sudan remains one of the countries with the highest rates of open defecation worldwide. The newly equipped trainers will introduce the effective and low-cost CLTS approach into their respective states and implement it at scale.
The five-day workshop organised by The MENTOR Initiative with support from UNICEF and the Government of the Netherlands, was facilitated by Dr Kamal Kar, founder of the CLTS approach and chairman of the CLTS Foundation.
Since its inception, CLTS has been successfully implemented in dozens of countries to reduce the burden of food and water-borne diseases, which lead to significant morbidity and mortality particularly among children.
Representatives from the government, UN organisations and NGOs met in Juba after the training, to put in place the plan to end open defecation over the next seven years.