Darian Rodriguez Heyman's Blog

In over 15 years of travel, work, and trying to build a better world, I have come to this one conclusion: the world does not need peace.

It needs less violence. It needs less trauma. It needs more equality and equity. It needs less corruption. It needs more justice. It needs progress. It needs humanity.

But none of these are predicated on peace and none of them add up to peace. What we need are the building blocks of the solutions to each of those needs.

A decade ago I set out to answer a fundamental question: how can we build world peace in our time? I was wrapping up a dissertation on cultural values in non-violent political movements. I spoke with global leaders, farmers, activists, and researchers in South Africa, India, and the United States, looking to quantify UNESCO’s “culture of peace”.

I was looking for some insight into what it would take to build a peaceful world where atrocities and trauma would no longer feature. I set out looking for peace, but instead found something much more complicated, beautiful, human, and basic.

I spent long days conducting surveys in Khayelitsha, the largest township of Cape Town, South Africa. As part of my routine I listened to the stories of everyday heroes who had taken unimaginable risks to make small steps towards freedom. They humored me and took my survey, and many would stay after and share their personal stories.

A thirty-something former protester was sharing just such a story with me, and when he finished he said to me, “Please tell your friends in America about me.” As I sat there in admiration of his life and accomplishments, he asked me about mine. How did I come to be in his community, why and by what path?

I had pursued peace, focused on peace, tried to dissect peace, but peace was the wrong goal. The solution to the problem I had set out to remedy was right there in my conversation with this activist: we all want to understand others and be understood.

Being able to understand people is the key to humanity’s greatest opportunities; it unlocks our potential to solve our greatest challenges. Understanding people involves a broad, rich set of skills, knowledge, and attitudes that, when activated, can create the perfect environment for human progress.

Understanding encompasses a rich mix of empathy, social systems, history, current events, identity, social science, humanities, biology, communication, relationship, self-reflection, customs, and so much more – the mix that makes up what has been called the “ethnosphere”, the totality of humanity’s cultural output.

Understanding has real world applications that address the needs of a twenty-first century world. It underpins transformative diplomacy that can bring an end to violence. It informs the policies that lead to equality and equity. It is the backbone of true justice. It is a key element in ending corruption. It is the first step in innovation. It creates better communities and better relationships.

Understanding is not a panacea, but it is a fundamental part of the solutions to the challenges we face. It must be combined with other elements in order to build comprehensive, lasting solutions.

Yet, we leave its development largely to chance. We do not help children or adults learn how to contextualize the rich stream of media and information that has suddenly been made available to them. We do not equip teachers to prepare the next generation for a rapidly globalizing and interconnecting world. We do not help parents and families explain a world that is complex, nuanced and constantly in motion to their children.

We do not help people turn the outrage they too often feel at world events into productive action. We try to teach them peace or teach them tolerance, without taking the time to help them build the basic skills they need to understand people.

What if there were a place that did fill in these gaps? A place with immersive, interactive exhibits that helped people of all ages discover their own style of understanding and become masters of it. A place that curated events and brought people together to learn and share their own experiences. A place that used technology as a means to push learning out into the world so that people had a resource for learning anywhere, any-time. A place that built bridges from a mental space of outrage to a place of co-created change.

The Ubuntu Lab is building just such a place. We are working on “post-digital” exhibits that use technology as a tool to bring people together, not as a showpiece that isolates them further. We are building a set of apps that do not augment reality, but rather guide the exploration of it. We are building new theories of learning specifically to address the fundamentals of understanding. I started out working on peace, but now am working on progress. We are building people’s ability to understand themselves, others, and their social world.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) make a clear commitment to universal sanitation. This is to be welcomed. But for the SDGs to be realized, they must be grounded in practical actions that can be replicated affordably, rapidly, and at scale.

The challenge is evident in the failure to achieve the sanitation targets outlined in the SDGs’ predecessor, the Millennium Development Goals. The WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme report for 2015 tells us that the percentage of the African urban population with access to improved sanitation increased by just one percent between 1990 and 2015, from 39 to 40 percent.

In absolute terms this means that almost 100 million urban citizens did gain access to improved sanitation during this period – but it also means that 225 million urban sub-Saharan African are still in need.

For those living in the highest-density settlements, standards for universal sanitation are problematic. Present definitions of “improved” sanitation take no account of population densities and risks like water table contamination and the flooding of fecal sludge over pathways, yards, and playgrounds – obvious health risks that incur massive costs both locally and nationally.

In the face of such staggering needs, and existing development plans and programs which struggle to address them affordably and at scale, slum-dweller federations in the Shack / Slum Dwellers International (SDI) network have been working with local governments to explore workable alternatives.

SDI’s slum dweller President Jockin Arputham has spent so much of his life committed to this issue that, as he says, “I’m known world over as ‘Toilet Man’. In South Africa, where it’s a stigma to say ‘toilet’, I made them talk about it. In the United Nations, I built a demonstration toilet in the UN plaza.”

Progress has been made. In Mumbai, a partnership between government and SDI’s Indian Alliance has residents managing toilet blocks in their communities. One thousand toilet blocks have been built by the Alliance, providing 20,000 seats and one million users – roughly half of those in need within the Mumbai Metropolitan Region.

In Blantyre, Malawi, both SDI members and the wider community have provided over 700 eco-sanitation units benefitting 2,300 households. Some 14,000 people (both landlords and tenants) share these facilities. Hundreds more households in Zambia and Zimbabwe have replicated this design, while in Namibia communities have saved, paid for, and installed their own sewerage pipes linking to trunk services.

In Dar es Salaam, the Tanzanian SDI Alliance has been drawing on the experiences of the Orangi Pilot Project in Karachi, Pakistan, to fine-tune designs for a simplified sanitation system that is already providing facilities for approximately 100 households.

What have we learned? When community members refuse to accept the status quo and innovate new ways of organizing, sanitation provision can improve.

The Indian Alliance was told that community toilets were unworkable – they proved these critics wrong. When governments, especially local governments, are prepared to work with organized local communities, then new solutions can be found. Community exchanges can test and spread these solutions.

But financing is needed to scale up. Community members are willing and able to pay for sanitation, but they can only contribute so much – for low-income families, anything more than US$4 a month per household is unaffordable. In SDI’s experience, capital is needed for these infrastructure costs. The best option is subsidized financing, but where this is not available SDI groups have made sanitation investments using low-interest loans.

Sanitation also cannot be dealt with in isolation. For sanitation investments to be scaled effectively and efficiently, water provision, drainage, and improved land tenure security are all important.

Different solutions are needed in the diverse contexts apparent throughout the Global South. SDI groups organize themselves at the local level, gather information on the needs of slum dwellers, negotiate with local government, and design solutions that work in their context – always prioritizing the poorest members in a community.

The local communities that make up the SDI alliances in 34 nations across the Global South do not understand why professional development assistance agencies do not support their work.

In so many places, communities see development agencies implementing small sanitation projects that are never going to address the massive needs. They see projects captured by landlords because the local context was misunderstood; they see corrupt contractors inflating their invoices; and they see poor management of facilities that soon fall into disrepair.

What are the steps forward? A first step is implementing suitable monitoring systems to collect accurate baseline information in communities. SDI has information on the sanitation situation in over 6,000 informal settlements. In SDI’s experience, such information helps communities establish their priorities and helps them to build relationships with their local governments.

Importantly, community-gathered data consistently emphasizes the priority slum communities place on improving access to sanitation, in settlements from Mumbai to Accra.

In partnership with like-minded organizations and governments, SDI is working to help achieve the SDGs by generating scalable, affordable, and environmentally sustainable sanitation solutions for the world’s rapidly growing slum dweller population. We believe that community involvement in the design, implementation, management, and monitoring of this agenda is essential, and non-negotiable.

 

The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor estimates business ownership among working-age adults in Zambia and Ghana at 17 percent and 26 percent respectively, compared to only six percent among those in the UK and seven percent in the USA. The story is the same across many African and Asian countries – entrepreneurship is thriving.

Given this manifest appetite for business creation, why is the urban sanitation sector generating so little interest for entrepreneurs? What is stopping entrepreneurs from stepping in and bringing low-cost technologies to market as they are in other sectors?

When nearly 70 percent of the fecal sludge generated in Dhaka goes through illegal connections to stormwater drains, it makes no business sense for an entrepreneur to invest in vacuum tankers.

Similarly, when over 60 percent of people in Kumasi use badly-managed public toilets, and landlords effectively subsidize housing for the poor due to stringent rent control, it doesn’t make sense for Ghanaian manufacturers and distributors of innovative toilets to target the so-called bottom of the pyramid.

To achieve universal access to improved sanitation by 2030 in urban areas, Water & Sanitaton for the Urban Poor (WSUP) argues that the current hostile environment for market-based sanitation businesses needs to change. Local and national governments need to create an environment where innovative sanitation products and services have a chance to thrive, become sustainable and eventually competitive.

Gradual change, we believe, can be achieved through three simultaneous approaches:

Level the playing field

Entrepreneurs need protection from informal providers offering unregulated services (e.g. unsafe pit-emptiers), “repressive” businesses (e.g. the presence of public toilet businesses being used as an excuse by landlords not to invest in household toilets) and illegal practices (e.g. unauthorized connections to sewers).

Without a level playing field, investment in innovative businesses providing safe sanitation products and services to low-income households will not be forthcoming. For instance, governments need to consider and be supported in the following:

introducing progressive by-laws that favor safe and sustainable products and services that result in improved sanitation;
gradually enforcing by-laws with the support of appropriate agencies;
protecting formal service providers from harassment (e.g. unwarranted arrest); and
requiring a higher quality of services, for example through training and certification.

Break market barriers

Barriers that stop entrepreneurs from investing in or offering sanitation products or services to the urban poor need to be identified and addressed. This needs to go far beyond the sanitation sector, to consider such complex urban issues as tenancy and land ownership. For example:

simplify registration / formalization of sanitation-related businesses;
provide and manage appropriate infrastructure for businesses to function profitably (e.g. decentralised sludge disposal points);
encourage public-private partnerships and/or service delivery contracts; and
provide performance-based cross-subsidies for serving the poor.

Catalyze the market

Demand and supply for safe products and services are generally suppressed in many low-income urban areas. There needs to be a process to help kick-start the market. For example:

provide forums for encouraging social entrepreneurship and innovation (e.g. conferences, awards, etc.);
support collective demand creation for the sector;
reduce customs charges on sanitation products targeting the poor (e.g. low-flush toilets);
provide financing for sanitation businesses targeting the poor; and
support the private sector in providing appropriate financing for the poor.

Implementing these three approaches and growing an investment-friendly environment requires significant investment by local and national governments. As agreed at the Third International Conference on Financing Development in Addis Ababa, domestic public resources need to be mobilized and used effectively in pursuit of the Sustainable Development Goals.

WSUP argues that there is a need to invest the locally mobilized finance in creating a more receptive enabling environment for innovative sanitation businesses targeting the bottom of the pyramid.

Such an approach has the potential to significantly improve access to sanitation, as well as deliver much needed private-sector job creation. WSUP is working on a number of different initiatives to help mobilize and better target public finance, including supporting the implementation of a sanitation tariff on water bills in Mozambique, strengthening property tax collection in Ghana to support toilets in households, and the Public Finance for WASH initiative with IRC and Tremolet Consulting.

We know that urban sanitation is extremely complex and there is no one-size-fits-all solution. At this stage in the push for universal access there is at least one certainty – new sanitation technologies won’t succeed in environments that are toxic for innovation and business.

The international community has a central role to play in helping governments better appreciate the underutilized powers they have to positively influence markets. There needs to be a gradual change from focusing on direct service delivery towards policy, regulation, enforcement, and private sector partnerships. If we can create investment-friendly environments where the need is greatest, we will greatly improve our chances of achieving universal access to sanitation.

“Everyone in developing countries has access to mobile phones – the sanitation sector should learn from this.” The fact that this common development myth went largely unchallenged during the session on scaling sanitation at last month’s Stockholm World Water Week says a lot about people’s understanding of both mobile phones and sanitation.

To start with, it is simply not true that “everyone” has a mobile phone. In 2014, 38 percent of people in Sub-Saharan Africa had phones, compared to 30 percent who had access to improved sanitation in 2015 (50 percent if shared facilities are included).

Then there’s the issue of service quality and accessibility. Reception blackspots, dropped calls, and access limited by the cost of airtime are all part of the deal with mobile phones: you pay for the level of service you can afford and there’s no assumption of a universal basic level of access.

This arrangement is fine for phones but absolutely not so for sanitation, a public good (and human right) where the service must be available all day, every day without fail and where meeting the needs of the unserved is a core driver.

So, does this mean there’s nothing for the sanitation sector to learn from mobile telephony? Actually, there’s a lot that can be learned, starting with the concept of mobile as a service.

Nobody wants a phone just for the handset: what people pay for is the service that a phone provides, the ability to call or text friends and access data. Similarly, a toilet that is never used or emptied is not of much use. Seemingly trivial, the insight that it’s the service provided by the toilet that is important brings a shift in perspective that has the potential to be transformative.

Instead of looking only at numbers of toilets or user behavior, we should look at service quality: whether toilets are clean and used, whether they are emptied and otherwise maintained, and whether waste is treated and disposed of safely (and nutrients recycled). And, we also look at the system that provides the service: the network of individuals, organizations, and institutions that together ensure that the service works as it should.

If you live in the developed world, you probably take sanitation services for granted. You flush your toilet and it works; if it doesn’t, you call someone and get it fixed. The waste goes into a sewer or some form of on-site storage, and it is treated and disposed of safely. A wide range of different businesses and agencies (public and private) are involved: from builders and toilet manufacturers through operators of sewage plants and tank-emptying services to national environmental agencies.

In all of this three things are universal: the service is regulated by government; you pay a fee for it; and, at some point along the chain, it is subsidized by public money.

But there’s a second lesson to be drawn from the comparison between phones and toilets, linked to the concept of universality, and it’s this: without government involvement, the private sector alone will never provide universal access. The marginal costs of extending coverage, from most people most of the time to everyone all of the time, are simply too high (hence the gaps in cell coverage even in wealthy countries).

Users should pay something for sanitation services – this makes them more demanding of service providers. But in no foreseeable future will the poorest users be able to pay the entire cost of their sanitation service all along the chain.

Of course we need (social) entrepreneurs to create the businesses that will provide toilets and remove and treat waste. But, if we really want everyone to have access to sanitation, we also need state leadership; and, to reach the poorest, state money.

Public finance is a critical part of the sanitation market, just as state agencies are critical actors within it and national procurement and regulatory systems are critical enablers of scale. Thinking that we can ignore or work around them in the name of efficiency or effectiveness misses a crucial point: countries that have achieved universal access to sanitation have always done so thanks to strong state leadership – something that WaterAid point out in their recent study of getting to universal access in Southeast Asia.

So there is a place for entrepreneurship and new technology. But only within an enabling environment provided by government leadership and public money. Where this does not exist, social entrepreneurs and others need to foster it – for example, by encouraging governments to demonstrate the sort of political leadership on sanitation currently being shown by India, and by supporting them to create the environment necessary for social enterprises to thrive.

At least 2.5 billion people lack access to adequate sanitation. An estimated one billion people defecate in the open. In order to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of universal access to sanitation by 2030, the global development community will need to connect 216 million people a year to toilets.

This sanitation goal promises to improve health, protect the environment, and grow the global economy. We know that for every dollar invested in water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH), there is a US$4.30 return in the form of reduced health care costs. Moreover, toilets help girls stay in school and make life substantially safer for both them and their mothers.

But big things have to happen quickly if we are going to achieve universal access to sanitation:

Leadership and political will. Access to sanitation for all needs to be placed at the heart of national development agendas.
Investment. The cost of achieving universal access by 2030 is an estimated US$27 billion for each of the next 15 years, or around .036 percent of global GDP.
Integrated and proven approaches which cut across ministries, sectors, and silos.

The world must work on all three fronts at once. The good news is that all of us in the WASH sector can be part of the solution by helping scale up proven, low-cost, community-led sanitation solutions.

Water For People has had many community-led sanitation successes. Our experience has taught us that a market development process relying on private sector delivery mechanisms can succeed where charity has failed. Price, place, product and promotion – the four Ps of marketing – must be tackled in a way that treats sanitation as a business (SAAB) and the householder as a consumer.

Designing a desirable product is the important first step. Next is the considerable challenge of getting that product to the consumer through commercially-viable supply chains, affordably, and without the artificial support of long-term subsidies.

A few examples from our country programs will serve to illustrate. In Uganda, Water For People helped develop a community-led “SaniHub” to enable research for technology development that puts the marketplace and the consumer at the center of innovation.

The SaniHub marshals the skills of engineers, consumer researchers, local government, and business specialists to create innovative, human-centered designs such as the Durasan, a modular flat pack toilet; the Rammer, a robust, low-cost pit-emptying device; and the biodigestor Tiger Worm toilet, all of which are on their way to commercialization. We have also provided marketing and financing to kick-start pit-emptying Gulper entrepreneurs, who are gradually gaining scale and profitability as demand grows.

In India, a ground-breaking collaboration with the national government has led to the development of a mobile app that lets customers digitally design their own toilets according to their budget and preferences.

Finally, Water For People is sparking change in Nicaragua by connecting consumers to finance. With our support, two micro-credit organizations, Aldea Global and Fundenuse, are offering household loans for sanitation and in doing so, turning the traditional subsidy model on its head.

We are as tenacious with monitoring and evaluation as we are with exploration of new technologies and business models – and we know that SAAB works.

It is time to scale up.

Scaling can be effectively accomplished through partnerships – among NGOs, between NGOs and the private sector, and between NGOs and national governments. In this, Water For People is leading by example, and has formed alliances with three water-sector NGOs – WaterAid, IRC, and Agua Consult. Together, we have developed joint principles and begun an Agenda for Change to accelerate change at a global scale and achieve the SDGs.

The Agenda includes working with national governments (as in Uganda and India). We are creating uniformity across sustainable low-cost sanitation models, access to financing, and data collection and sharing for learning and continuous improvement. Such alignment has the potential to achieve much greater impact than is possible with the typical practice of isolated efforts. Programmatic efficiency also translates into a greater return on investment for donors.

Our Agenda for Change will help ensure the sustainability of sanitation programs. By empowering local entrepreneurs and making SAAB a common goal across NGOs and national governments, we can build on past successes to maximize and scale innovative, low-cost – and proven – market-based models.

Let us hope that the SDGs will get sanitation the attention it deserves. Access to a toilet is critical for poverty reduction and sustainable development. It is also a matter of human dignity and a basic right. We all have a role to play.

Across the globe people are already asking if the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are too ambitious. In India, many doubt that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will succeed in achieving universal sanitation and ending open defecation by Mahatma Gandhi’s 150th birthday in 2019 – his stated goal.

I just spent two weeks in India learning from public and corporate leaders from 25 Indian states, members of parliament, and senior officials in the union government about their national sanitation plan, called Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, or the Clean India Campaign.

Many of the leaders I met in Delhi and Bhopal not only said that the 2019 target is doable, but that even four years is too long to wait to deliver universal sanitation and end open defecation in their communities, districts, and states. They assert that it is difficult to sustain enthusiasm, momentum, political commitments, and budgets, so they intend to compress the timeframe even further. The leaders aim to eliminate open defecation and provide universal sanitation in the next 18-24 months.

Why should we wait until 2030, or even 2019? Fifteen years is a lifetime for many families in Africa, Asia, and Latin America who lack a proper place to go to the bathroom. Without access to a clean, private, and safe sanitation facility in or near their homes, they continue to suffer threats to their security, missed educational opportunities, preventable disease, and stunting of their physical and cognitive development.

There are currently 600 million Indians who defecate in the open on a daily basis, approximately 60 percent of the world’s total. Prime Minister Modi, in his Red Fort speech of August 2014, expressed the political will and leadership necessary to move hundreds of millions of Indians to action.

So how to get there, in such a tight timeframe? The answers presented themselves at a workshop on Rural Sanitation and Behavior Change in Bhopal, expertly organized and chaired by the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council.

In order to give 600 million open defecators in India access to toilets, and get people to use them, each Indian state, district, and community needs to prepare and deploy the right mix of messages, messengers, targets, and timing. The role of social entrepreneurs and policy innovators has never been more important.

Keys to Success

Flexibility. Campaigns designed to get people to use toilets and stop open defecation need to be customized for each community, and perhaps each household. Social norms about things like human waste, religious inclinations, ability and willingness to pay, and peer pressure need to be incorporated into these efforts from day one of the design phase.

Incentives (or lack thereof). There are vigorous debates about whether financial and material incentives for proper sanitation should be provided by the government, and there is no single answer. In some cases, financial incentives provided to Indian households to build toilets have been effective. In other cases they have proven meaningless or even counter-productive.

Some communities are pursuing a Community-Led Total Sanitation approach – first applied in Bangladesh in 2000 – with no financial incentives or subsidies. Some are fining open defecators or marking households whose members defecate in the open.

Other, more positive incentives include cash payments for using public toilets, higher prices for milk from dairies in communities that achieve Open Defecation Free status, special schoolboxes for school children who come from households free from open defecation, and myriad others.

The right balance and timing of hardware vs. software: Supply and demand for sanitation facilities (hardware) must be properly balanced with effective behavior change programs (software). Information, education, and communication efforts in India currently lag far behind the provision of sanitation hardware, and Indian social entrepreneurs have both tremendous opportunities and challenges throughout the supply chain.

If India is to achieve total sanitation coverage by 2030, or even earlier, all hands need to be on deck. Prime Minister Modi has demonstrated the political will to achieve change. Social entrepreneurs and policy innovators are in an excellent position to collaborate with the public and private sector, and push even more aggressively on both the “hardware” and the “software” fronts.

If all of these stakeholders can sustain momentum in an assertive but balanced fashion, there is no need to wait until 2019, much less 2030, to achieve universal access to sanitation in India.

“Why do we have toilets at school but not at home?” This question from one of her children prompted Nusrat, a wife and mother of six living in India, to apply for a sanitation loan. Within two weeks of receiving the loan, Nusrat was able to purchase a toilet. Now, one year later, the monthly instalments on Nusrat’s loan have all been repaid and her family is happier, healthier, and safer.

In India today, more than half of households lack access to improved sanitation. In rural areas, this proportion rises to over 70 percent, or about 620 million people. In fact, India accounts for 60 percent of open defecation globally.

Poor sanitation contributes to diarrheal disease, which in turn results in premature mortality, childhood malnutrition and stunting, high healthcare costs, and massive productivity losses. Emerging research is showing that childhood stunting has lifelong effects on both health and cognitive ability.

As the United Nations member states prepare to adopt a new, universal set of goals, targets and indicators to guide their political policies and agendas over the next 15 years, I am encouraged to see that Sustainable Development Goal #6 is dedicated to ensuring availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all. While progress has been made, the Millennium Development Goal of halving the proportion of the world lacking access to improved sanitation remains unmet.

I believe that financing will be the most critical bottleneck that we will have to overcome if we are to achieve our ambitious goal of universal access to water and sanitation services. While we know that investment in achieving full coverage in a country is one of the most cost-effective development interventions a government can make, only a quarter of the world’s governments allocate the resources to achieve it. Foreign aid will play a crucial role but it’s not a panacea.

If we are to truly embrace these ambitions we’ll have to think differently about how we finance them. Viewing people in poverty as citizens with rights and resources versus beneficiaries of aid and charity is the first step.

For a family living below the national poverty line, the upfront cost of a toilet can easily equal a household’s average monthly income but many people are willing to make the investment if they can spread the cost over time by saving or borrowing. In India alone demand for microfinancing sanitation in rural communities is estimated to be upwards of $6 billion.

Sanitation financing for the rural poor provides significant social and economic benefits, helps governments and donors stretch their investments further, and allows households to more easily access critical sanitation services.

Through Water.org’s WaterCredit program, we have found that microfinance can address demand by offering local microfinance institutions (MFIs) and nonprofits a variety of capacity-building grants and technical assistance to create, pilot, and scale sanitation microfinance. These partners have gone on to source funding from banks and local capital markets to disburse loans to people in need.

To date, WaterCredit has provided $12.9 million in smart subsidies to MFI and nonprofit partners, which in turn have disbursed more than $128 million in loans, successfully reaching 2.6 million people throughout 10 countries with transformative water and sanitation solutions.

Sanitation lending multiplies the impact of a traditional subsidy by leveraging capital from the private sector and social investors for loan capital, recycling capital back into the system and freeing up government and philanthropic funds for the most disenfranchised communities in desperate need of direct aid and subsidies. For every $100 we invested in catalyzing sanitation lending, 21 people gained access to improved sanitation.

Based on Water.org partner performance, loans for sanitation products have a remarkable 99 percent repayment rate. They also have strong social impact on borrowers, fulfilling pressing needs for improved health and well-being. The benefits of sanitation lending extend to the MFIs by helping them attract new clients and retain existing ones, as well as helping them achieve their social missions.

As world leaders set out to determine how to achieve the ambitious new Sustainable Development Goals, we encourage them to explore ensuring access to affordable capital for sanitation solutions for all.

Together, through sanitation financing, and other sustainable approaches, we will end open defecation by 2030, creating a cycle of opportunity from what was once one of poverty.

While developed countries realized the importance of sanitation nearly two centuries ago, developing countries are yet to come to grips with this issue. As a result, people’s health and quality of life have suffered.

Over 80 percent of the disease burden in developing countries can be attributed to unsafe drinking water, caused primarily by the unhygienic disposal of human waste, often connected with open defecation.

At present more than 60 percent of all open defecation in the world takes place in India. Even where toilets have been installed, people often prefer to defecate in the open. If we are to achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal of universal access to sanitation, open defecation needs to end.

To this end, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s push for improved sanitation is very welcome. The fear, however, is that it may end up as a toilet-counting exercise. This would be a disaster.

The program, Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (Clean India Movement) will only succeed if communities participate in the construction of sanitation facilities, use toilets once they are built, and embrace hygienic habits and behaviors.

In development circles, water attracts a lot of attention, sanitation less so. While supplying safe, potable water needs little behavioral change on the part of a community, toilet use and proper hygiene practices require considerable change.

There should be full inclusion, especially in rural areas, for sanitation to succeed. In a village, if even a small fraction of the people do not embrace the construction of toilets and their use, the village water sources are still at risk of pollution, bringing ill health on all inhabitants. There must be incentives to convince everyone in a community to adopt toilet usage and proper hygiene.

Traditionally in India, people have defecated near water sources – streams, rivers, tanks, ponds, etc. – so that they could clean themselves with water after defecating. To induce people to use toilets, water needs to be brought to the toilets. Otherwise there is a risk that people will go back to the same old places for defecation, even after toilets are built. Another risk is that the burden on women – who typically bring all the water needed for the household – will increase, as they will be forced to bring water for use in the toilets also.

When we speak of the poor and sanitation, immediately terms like cheap, low-cost or no-cost spring up. Sanitation is as much about dignity as it is about defecation. The poor should not be humiliated by their sanitation facilities.

Toilets need not be glamorous, but they do need to protect users’ dignity. Toilets should have roofs, doors, and ventilation. Especially in tropical countries, it is also good to have a bathing room attached to the toilet. This gives adequate privacy, especially to women, when bathing.

In addition, hygiene education is important, especially for children. The importance of bathing, handwashing, and cleanliness can be inculcated more easily in children. They will be the agents of change in their homes.

Access to dignified sanitation is a goal that can be achieved in our lifetime.

Warby Parker has distributed over a million pairs of glasses to people in need. Luxottica – the Italian firm behind about 80 percent of the eyewear business – has “provided vision care access to 8.5 million people worldwide.”

If you’re a conscious consumer looking for glasses, which provider do you prefer?

The question is not unique to eyewear. Footwear maker Toms has given 45 million pairs of shoes to poor children. Maiyet, a fashion brand, “seeks to elevate the next generation of master craftsmen from places such as India, Indonesia, Italy, Kenya, Mongolia, and Peru,” and trains its partners to “promote stability and prosperity in their communities.”

And clothing designer Eileen Fisher’s vision “is for an industry where human rights and sustainability are not the effect of a particular initiative, but the cause of a business well run.”

Are these fashion companies practicing a more conscious or inclusive capitalism? Or are they making token gestures so they can tell their customers what they want to hear? Should an ethical observer even care about motives, or only outcomes? And what outcomes are relevant?

A growing number of consumers want to “vote with their wallets” – but the information provided about companies resembles political campaign messages rather than clear evidence of sustainability.

In my view, capitalism can evolve toward sustainability if the concept is understood to include all the impacts a business has on society – not limited to environmental effects but also including things like workers’ health, fair trade, and income inequality. All these companies claim to be sustainable capitalists, but are they really?

I was curious why my research into sustainability kept turning up examples in the marketing of upscale fashion companies; Eileen Fisher’s “business as a movement” statement was the deepest and most comprehensive I’ve come across.

Does the culture of this industry account for these companies’ seemingly more ethics-driven choices? Not according to Jeffry Aronsson, former CEO of several fashion companies including DKNY and Marc Jacobs, and now an investor in the industry.

In fashion a differentiated message is important, he said, and “authentic is good for the brand proposition.” But ethics “would only drive an investment as long as it doesn’t divert focus from the business mission.”

Paul van Zyl, co-founder and CEO of Maiyet and former executive secretary of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, did see an unusual situation in fashion, rooted in customer attitudes and the economics of the business.

“Artisanship is at the root of luxury and French and Italian artisans have historically been responsible for production. For both economic and social reasons European artisanal production is facing strong headwinds. This creates space for incredibly skilled artisans from developing economies…to satisfy the needs of the luxury consumer.”

The key according to van Zyl is to provide “these artisans with design direction, access to markets and the infrastructure to produce impeccable products. If you can solve these challenges you can produce a twenty-first century luxury brand – and do good in the world at the same time.”

If consumers want to use their wallets to make a difference, how can they tell which companies are sincere about social change? How can they compare Warby Parker with Luxottica, for example?

Both companies have philanthropic programs. But the consumer still has no data, for example, on whether one company insists on better labor practices at the factories it patronizes.

Also, Warby Parker is certified as a B Corp, which offers a stronger guarantee that they practice sustainable capitalism. By contrast, Luxottica – which controls many of the world’s top eyeware brands like Chanal, Prada, Oakley, and Tory Burch – behaves like a classic monopolist, pumping up advertising and raising prices (CBS reported that after the company bought Ray-Ban, the price increased from $30 to 150, for example.)

In other words, Warby Parker has a structural commitment to social benefit, while Luxottica pursues practices that shift consumer surplus to investors – an unsustainable form of capitalism.

The conscious consumer doesn’t need to know what is in Luxottica’s heart, nor Warby Parker’s, for that matter. The customer does need to know how broad and thorough a commitment the company has made to practices that can make capitalism sustainable.

Eileen Fisher claims “we don’t want sustainability to be our edge. We want it to be universal.” Does the company mean it? Do we care, as long as they are dealing responsibly with their supply chain, labor force, and environmental impact?

If you dig deeper into their practices, you do find evidence that substantiates their statements. For example, they became a member of bluesign in 2009 – a standard that “unites the textile supply chain to reduce its impact on people and the environment” – and then worked with Chinese silk dyers to make them compliant with the system.

And Jeffry Aronsson is right – fashion is not unique. The high-end home furnishings business displays similar characteristics, and has attracted competition from large companies like the Container Store or IKEA, who reduce consumer costs while bundling sustainability into their offers, as well as small companies like the Portuguese retailer Boa Safra, whose label promises low energy consumption, non-toxic materials, recyclability, local origin, biodegradeability, fair trade, and low waste.

But figuring out the results of a company’s sustainability efforts takes a lot of knowledge and consideration. Consumers are confronted with a proliferating set of markers of sustainability: LEED certified buildings, Fair Trade coffee or trustea tea, bluesign textiles, EICC certified electronics, and too many others to keep track of.

That guarantees that for many consumers a company’s reputation – not actual performance – will influence choice. What’s lacking is a comprehensive sustainability scorecard.

A Way Forward

As customers, we want to understand companies’ motivations because we think it will help us identify those who are genuinely trying to be part of the solution. But we’d be better off knowing more about their behavior.

When we choose meat that Whole Foods markets as humanely raised, we don’t need to know if the farmer loves animals – we trust that a “5” means that the animal’s wellbeing was protected regardless.

Why not create a universal measurement system that looks at the key elements of business and grades each one for sustainability, across industries, allowing consumers to make choices based on evidence rather than reputation. The system might consider materials, as Boa Safra and bluesign do; labor practices, as EICC and Fair Trade do; social engagement, as Maiyet and Eileen Fisher do; even competitiveness, as antitrust law is supposed to do. Then as consumers we could stop trying to read minds – and could more easily disregard empty assertions about the sustainability of a given brand.

What we need is a more comprehensive set of metrics for company behavior, and more customers who insist on high grades. This would convince consumer-focused companies to behave more sustainably, whatever their motives.

For nonprofit leaders frustrated with inefficient, legacy processes in their organizations, introducing software systems to automate operations may seem like a cure-all.

Maybe you are changing your accounting system to provide more intelligible financial reports to managers. Or, you are debuting a program database to store information electronically and finally retire those paper files. Or, you are swapping out the human resources system that stores staff data, to make processing paperwork less painful.

Regardless of what you’re trying to fix, fancy systems are usually not the complete answer. Unless your staff is motivated to learn the new technology and evolve their work habits, your improvement plan will stall. How you introduce the new system into your organization may ultimately trump which software vendor you go with.

Here are three management practices to help bridge the inevitable gap between the promise of new technology and the reality at your organization:

1. Form a team

For any large-scale technology change, leaders have an important decision to make: How do you want to engage staff who will ultimately be impacted by the system you choose?

Not everyone needs to (or should) be a decision-maker. Value people’s time by being strategic about whom you invite to participate. If, for example, you are switching from paper timesheets to electronic timekeeping, some cross-section of program managers and human resources, accounting, and IT staff could be at the table. Use focus groups, software demos, and other interactive venues to draw people selectively into the mix.

One of my clients, a large international nonprofit, struck this balance between inclusion and efficiency particularly well. The CFO entrusted two mid-level managers to lead the process for selecting an enterprise-wide software system. Through facilitated group feedback sessions and surveys, they collected input from a cross-section of staff.

The CFO recognized that tenured staff, representing a vocal majority, would resent the new system if their opinions were not solicited. Wisely, she did not rely on her authority to mandate the system change. Her ability to share power and be open to other voices created room for a democratic decision-making process. It also fostered goodwill towards the new system.

2. Learn first

A lot can be learned by soliciting input beyond your organization’s walls. Before committing to a new system, take some time to understand how others have tackled operational growing pains similar to the ones you are facing.

For example, are you dealing with an influx of government funding, requiring more rigorous reporting and cash management on your part? Maybe you’re facing tighter restrictions from private funders, forcing you to monitor your spending more closely. Or, perhaps a growing number of your employees are based across multiple sites and geographies, which demands more standardized practices and protocols.

Try to zero in on the challenge you are trying to address through the new technology. Then, track down an expert on organizations comparable to your own.

Seasoned leaders in nonprofit operations – the Director of Finance and Operations types – harbor a wealth of wisdom. However, their perspectives are often underappreciated because of the internal nature of their roles.

This upfront learning can save you time later. Why build from scratch when you can benefit from someone else’s experience?

3. Customize less, not more

Once you have chosen your new system, it is tempting to adapt it to exactly match how your organization currently operates. Rethink this impulse. The more hyper-customized a software platform, the more challenging it is to maintain as the technology evolves.

Plus, the technical support available at the vendor may not meet your continuing needs. In the long run, it is probably in your best interest to favor the original system configuration and only do minimal customization.

This can get tricky. Nonprofit organizations tend to choose their software first and then figure out what it will mean for their business operations. This often leads to extremely specialized practices that are difficult to scale as the organization grows.

Take the time to step back and break down your program delivery approach when choosing a new technology: What is essential to meet the needs of your constituents? What can be simplified or made more predictable and consistent?

Be ruthlessly objective. Test your assumptions around what practices are perceived as sacred or immutable.

For example, one of my clients, an established community agency, had developed a unique, largely paper-based, intake process for each of its many programs. While this worked initially, it became increasingly time-consuming and tedious to keep track of participants as they moved across different programs and as the number of participants grew. The Executive Director recognized that the agency needed to radically rethink its client service approach before moving to a new program database.

Perhaps running a smooth operation is not intrinsic to your nonprofit’s mission. However, error-prone, non-standard business processes destabilize an organization. They also distract program staff from what matters most: delivering high quality services to constituents.

By introducing new software systems, you can achieve tremendous gains in operational excellence, including greater efficiency and consistency. But the system itself is not an automatic fix.

Take the time to develop a team, learn what has worked for others, question your processes, and listen to your people. This will help ensure that the technology you choose best serves its purpose.