Positive emotions can motivate people to adopt sustainable water, sanitation, and hygiene practices. These practices include handwashing with soap and water and increased use of latrines to end open defecation and improve menstrual hygiene management. Such practices significantly impact people's health and overall well-being, especially in the lives of girls and women.
Moreover, realising potential, enhancing existing skills, and empowering individuals are equally vital to achieving systemic WASH and self-determination for future growth. By implementing interventions that prioritise participation and value the knowledge and culture of all involved, individuals and communities can become active agents in their transformation.
These creative and fun approaches presented here are diverse, have been developed over time, and based on different behavioural theories. They are also designed and measured with increasing rigour.
Belinda Abraham
Viva con Agua • Germany
At the One Drop Foundation, we always say that we turn water into action thanks to arts and culture! This is not just a nice and catchy tagline. This is what we do.
15 years of learnings, failures, successes, experimentation, prototyping have been combined to create a new way of shaping change processes by following the steps of behaviour change and combining them with art. Our approach is inspired by our heritage from Cirque du Soleil’s creative nexus, that we mixed with cognitive science, educational psychology, and social anthropology. We call it SOCIAL ART because it is art made FOR, BY and WITH the participants.
We co-create interventions with local actors and community members that follow the steps of behaviour change. These interventions are either “Inspire” ones (related to pre-intention/contemplation, and intention/ contemplation stages). “Activate” ones (related to preparation and action stages) or “Sustain” ones (related to maintenance stage). The process of co-creation is a systemic one, taking into consideration contextual, technological, financial, and psychosocial determinants of behaviours.
The Universal Languages for Behaviour Change (UL4BC) program promotes positive impacts and emotions to motivate people to adopt sustainable water, sanitation, and hygiene practices. The approach uses arts, sports, dance, music, and games to create an atmosphere of joy and dignity where people can learn and experience how to deal with WASH issues. UL4BC inspires people to engage in collaborative problem-solving and take action for improved WASH services in the long term. The programme focuses on realising potential, enhancing existing skills, and empowering individuals to achieve self-determined and self-designed future growth. It also advocates upstream for human rights to water and sanitation, raising political and public awareness thereby catalysing systemic change at the local and national levels.
