This past week, Policy’s WeSpeak project ran a community sensitization and engagement outreach campaign in the Kireka B community on the outskirts of Kampala. The outreach was attended by over 40 residents that comprised mainly of landlords and homeowners in the area. WeSpeak is a feedback platform that uses basic mobile phone-based technology tools like USSD and Interactive Voice Response (IVR) to enhance citizen engagement and participation, and to enable citizens to demand for improved service delivery in their communities.

The objective of the community outreach was to:

  1. Sensitize the community on good sanitation and hygiene practices, specifically about pit latrine hygiene and proper use
  2. Introduce the residents to the WeSpeak USSD — *270*72# and IVR — 0800275276 toll-free lines that they can use to find service providers to collect their garbage and empty their pit latrines or septic tanks as well as provide a platform for residents to air out concerns to their community leaders. The aim of the platform is to provide a simple solution for citizens to provide feedback to their local governments in an anonymous and confidential manner.
  3. To create awareness about our partner’s product, Freshpit, a Sanitation Solutions Group service that offers affordable pit emptying services in communities.

We were only able to bring together this community meeting after months of engagement with local government members in these communities. After securing the permission of the chairman Local Council One (LC1) for the area, and securing the support of other local leaders such as Village Health Teams, we were able to have an open and honest dialogue with the community and in turn, introduce the WeSpeak platform as well as collect important feedback to better tailor the platform to the community needs.

Residents gathered in a communal area

The LC1 for Kireka B began by welcoming all the community residents present. He acknowledged the presence of Pollicy and explained that the outreach was arranged to focus on fecal waste management as a result of the findings from our prior research on waste management practices which found that residents in the community, while unwilling to pay for garbage collection, believing it should be a service provided by the government, were more willing to pay to have their pit latrine or septic tanks emptied. He also acknowledged the presence of Sanitation Solutions Group, a fecal waste management company that offers affordable sanitation products and services, specifically pit and septic tank emptying services. He also urged the residents in his community to listen, learn, participate and also practice good sanitation and pit latrine hygiene such as regular pit emptying when full, to avoid throwing garbage into the pits and also to fumigate regularly.

WeSpeak’s program manager, Patricia gave a brief description of the platform, informing the residents that they can use it to find a service provider to collect their garbage or empty their pit latrines. She also highlighted that the platform can also be used to report any waste management related concerns such as blocked drainages, overflowing pit latrines and illegal dumpsites amongst other issues. Some of the residents expressed concern about the confidentiality of the identity of the people who make reports, to which Patricia assured them that this was indeed the gist of the platform, to allow citizens to comfortably report issues with no fear of being singled out by other community members.

Our partner, Sanitation Solutions Group (SSG), was represented by Ms. Deborah Akong from their Public Relations department. She conducted a brief presentation on the importance of toilet hygiene, noting that a clean toilet reduces the chances of avoidable diseases, promoted environmental hygiene and also keeps one from getting embarrassed around friends and family.

She then gave a brief description of SSG and the services they offer including; pit emptying for the lined and unlined pit latrines, septic tank emptying, scaling up pit latrines with satopans and luxopans slab repair, rubbish removal as well as odor elimination with Jez and Vivian. She explained that they use two methods to empty pits depending on the location/accessibility of the pit/septic and the client’s preference and affordability. Specifically, Deborah mentioned the use of a Gulper, which is a manual pump that is typically used to pump fecal sludge from the pit latrines. It was also mentioned that they offer a free pit survey to any potential client to determine how much it will cost to have their pit latrine emptied.

Finally, the LC1 chairperson concluded by thanking the residents for making the time to listen to a topic that is pertinent to the wellbeing and comfort of everyone in the community. He reminded them that they reside in an area that was running short of space to allow for the construction and reconstruction of pit latrines and that they should opt to empty instead of digging up new pits. He thanked the team from Pollicy for thinking about Kireka B for the research earlier conducted and called for more regular sensitization and awareness drives.

Heated debates on the topic of waste management

Most importantly, he also welcomed the idea of the WeSpeak platform because he felt that it would give him the opportunity to know what was going on in his community without the need to move door to door. It would also provide him with the evidence he needs during planning and budget meetings at the division level.

At Pollicy, the first step to developing our technology platform begins with the communities. We’ve been very excited with the response from local governments and from citizens as well. Our biggest advice to others is to develop strong relationships with local leaders and take their feedback into account when building and re-iterating on existing tools.

Written by Patricia Navvuga, Program Manager at Pollicy