Child Potties: Sanitation for the Most at Risk

Diarrhea is the 2nd leading cause of mortality for children under five worldwide, causing nearly 800,000 deaths per year. Sanitation work in developing countries has largely addressed the needs of adults while ignoring children’s sanitation and the associated burden on mothers. Recognizing the crucial importance of safe sanitation for children has recently grown in the WASH and nutrition sectors. Children’s feces are more infective than adults’ due to a higher pathogen load. Our Bold Idea is to test a practical and sustainable way for caregivers to dispose of child feces safely. The innovation lies in introducing a simple, known technology - a children’s potty - to the rural market, where it has potential for enormous impact. Few others are tackling rural IYCS, and perhaps none with a market approach designed to empower consumers and create jobs. We would like to address this issue that has long remained a blind spot in public health, and creates an unnecessary burden for rural women. We aim to establish that i) IYCS products can be marketed in rural areas with sufficient volume and margin to make their distribution viable; and ii) households purchasing IYCS products use them consistently to safely dispose of infant and child feces. There is a clear pathway to scale with 1.3 million rural households in Cambodia having a child under 5. WaterSHED will incorporate children’s sanitation products into its growing distribution network of 200+ enterprises and 330+ sales agents.