Closing the Loop between Sanitation, Disaster Resiliency and Food Security for the ‘Base of the Pyramid’

 In 2008, WAND built some 17 double-vault ecosan toilets with fund support from the German Doctors for Developing Countries. Most of these were located in elementary schools in the Misamis Oriental towns of Initao, Libertad and Manticao.
 But the P28, 000 cost of the double vault model was too expensive for its target users. In 2009, Mr. Sayre won a research grant from the Science and Technology Innovations for the Base of the Pyramid in Southeast Asia (iBoP-Asia) to explore alternatives to the double-vault model.
Now four EcoSan models are available from the hanging ecosan toilet for coastal communities; lightweight, mobile arborloo toilets for mountain areas; single-vault ecosan toilets suitable for households and deployment during conflicts or calamities; and urinals (EcoPees).
 Mr. Sayre’s custom-designs dry toilets that can be used by those living in urban slums, uplands, marshy areas, river settlements and coastal areas (flood-prone areas), and dry toilets for persons with disabilities and young children.
 The designs were executed at the WAND demonstration area in Libertad and pilot-tested in Barrio Tuod in Manticao municipality, Barrio Oguis in Initao and a coastal area in Initao municipality.
Michael Brown, project manager of the Floating Community Waste Management Project in Cambodia, noted the high acceptance rate of ecosan in the primary school, beachside and mountain communities where it was piloted. Brown is a Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Engineer by profession, and is also affiliated with Live & Learn Environmental Education, and Engineers Without Borders, Australia.
“Every user of the ecosan toilet was very happy with the toilet and spoke very positively about their experience with it,” Brown noted.
Local beneficiaries, who were mostly poor farmers and fishermen, were able to use, manage and take good care of the pilot units with little fuss.
Most of the materials used in the designs were indigenous materials like bamboo, coconut palm fronds, wooden poles, gmelina wood and rattan baskets. Recycled drums, containers, black plastic sheets and heavy-duty Manila hemp sacks were sourced from a junk store in Cagayan de Oro.
The design of the dual chamber ecosan and hanging toilet for beach communities was very innovative, and made excellent use of local materials and skills for construction, noted Mr. Brown.
 “The special ecosan bowl is produced by our local masons,” Mr. Sayre said. “The result is a much cheaper ecosan toilet.”
“Some of the biggest obstacles facing the ecosan design are misconceptions about the smell and dirtiness of the toilet,” Mr. Brown noted. “WAND has done an excellent job educating the communities on the use of the toilets and the ecosan process, and users were happy to have the ecosan toilets in their homes, which in my experience is very challenging.”
With proceeds of a grant from Grand Challenges Explorations (GCE), an initiative funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, WAND is conducted an innovative global health and development research project entitled Ecological Sanitation for the Base of the Pyramid.

 
GCE funds scientists and researchers worldwide to explore ideas that can break the mold on persistent global health and development challenges.
To win the grant, Sayre had to demonstrate the viability and potential impact of EcoSan to address pressing issues in sanitation and family health technologies, one of five critical global heath and development areas.
“These grants are meant to spur new discoveries that could ultimately save millions of lives,” said Chris
Wilson, director of Global Health Discovery at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
These ecological sanitation initiatives aim to help those at BoP by making available much needed fertilizer for plants to improve nutrition, income and biodiversity; prevent the spread of diseases due to open defecation; and prevent contamination of the water table and water sources.  
When Typhoon Haiyan (known locally as Yolanda) ran amok in Southern Philippines in November 2013, WAND was one of the first NGOs in the disaster areas, training survivors to plant their own gardens and become self-sufficient.
Typhoon Haiyan caused over 5,000 fatalities and displaced some 4 million Filipinos, and affected 14-16 million more, according to the Government of the Philippine’s Disaster Response Operations Monitoring and Information Center (DROMIC).
With donations from all over the world, the WAND Foundation trained 120 survivors/trainees in Ormoc City, Leyte, with trainees required to train their neighbors back home.
The core training was led by WAND staff, Annie Jane Lagawan, who undertook a 9 month Rural Leaders Training Program at the Asian Rural Institute in Japan. Training included active labor and theory that familiarized trainees with concepts as plant growth, agronomic requirements, organic fertilizer, soil conditioners, vegetable harvesting techniques, vegetable planning and budgeting and preservation of vegetables.
Apart from training survivors with gardening and harvesting knowledge, Lagawan set forth ARI’s philosophy called Enrichment of Foodlife, an ideology that encouraged the ‘value of producing and sharing healthy food in a manner sustainable to the environment and to the community, through the cooperative efforts of the community’.
With the aid of private donors, the food resiliency program implemented by WAND provided displaced households with proper farming training, vegetables seeds, garden materials and garden tools, helping over 440 families, with each of the original participant trainee reaching out to 3-4 other families in Leyte. This has allowed bunk-house residents to raise crops in small family plots, communal gardens and in containers when space became an issue.
Now, previously idle lands have developed into lush gardens yieldingpotatoes, kangkong,
onions, peppers, okra and squash. Families with a surplus of vegetables are able to generate extra income.

With gardening, WAND, has not only provided survivors with a source of sustainable nutrition and income but has also built a sense of community. People share what they have planted and gardens have become a communal point of conversation, meeting and work. As a tool of therapy, harvesting, has helped millions of people cope with the misfortunes and hardships in life, germinating seedlings of hope. URL: https://www.wordsinthebucket.com/philippines-post-haiyan-gardening-tool-social-impact
Samaritan’s Purse, an international nonprofit based in North Carolina, partnered with WAND to scale up Sayre’s attempts to provide toilets to neighborhoods at risk for contaminating fresh water sources and to provide tools for the gardens.
Sayre provided the design for an efficient toilet and Samaritan’s Purse provided the resources and hired Filipinos in the disaster area to produce donated bathrooms, said program director Gavin Gramstad.
Toilets made by WAND and Samaritan’s Purse are made through sweat equity. Families are provided assistance and materials but must build the toilet themselves.
“He is so tied into the community. Elmer says exactly what the needs are and how to address them directly,” said Yen Pham, a 2009 UCLA alumna who worked with Samaritan’s Purse in Tacloban.
The toilets are crucial to keeping illnesses like cholera out of communities that are already very vulnerable to infectious disease, Sayre said.
Samaritan’s Purse outfitted four municipalities with Sayre’s septic tank and bowl designs so that the towns were completely free of raw sewage by 2016. The whole process requires 10,000 donated toilets.
Samaritan’s Purse enrolls every recipient of a toilet in a class on the role of proper sanitation in water-borne illnesses like cholera that can devastate communities in the Philippines.
For now, the people who have learned to garden from WAND’s trainings are reaping the rewards of their newfound green thumbs. With harvests once or twice a month, people have plenty of vegetables to eat, and enough left over to sell sometimes, Sayre said.
Already, the Eco-San project has taken wings and diversified into organic agriculture with the next generation.
Jed Christian Sayre, Elmer’s son, was awarded a grant from The Pollination Projecton May 21, 2016 for his Philippines Heirloom Vegetable Seeds Project, which sought to restore essential micronutrients lost by Typhoon Haiyan’s destructive passage in the town of town of Albuera, Leyte.
Jed recognized the importance of vegetable farming to help bridge this gap and thus created the Philippines Heirloom Vegetable Seeds Project, providing open pollinated high-valued vegetable seeds to 750 youth backyard gardeners. While the project addressed food security and nutrition, it also provides economic security for its participants. URL: https://thepollinationproject.org/grants-awarded/jed-christian-sayre-philippines-heirloom-vegetable-seeds-project/
Two years later, it was Elmer’s wife Cora to be selected as one of GlobalGiving’s ten 2018 Disaster Feedback Fellows from community-based nonprofits spent who spent one week in Washington, D.C., in early October 2018 learning from each other, promoting their disaster recovery projects to peers and funders, and speaking at and attending the 2018 Feedback Summit.
The Disaster Recovery Network at GlobalGiving funded the fellowship to foster collaboration and community feedback in disaster recovery projects around the world.
“There is no more crucial time to foster this exchange than now, as disasters are increasing in frequency and severity around the world,” said Britt Lake, GlobalGiving’s Chief Program Officer and the Director of the Disaster Recovery Network, which pioneers a model of effective, community-led relief and recovery through locally focused grants, information exchange, and training programs.
During the Feedback Summit, fellows shared the innovative ways they collect feedback from the people they serve and learned new ways to integrate feedback into their everyday work.
“I am very greatly honored to be chosen as one of the fellows. I’ve learned so much, especially about interventions other NGOs use,” said Cora who co-founded WAND with Elmer in 2008. https://www.globalgiving.org/learn/2018-fellow-cora-sayre/?rf=cm
Cora has seen the increasing intensity of typhoons over the last decade—and made it her life’s mission to help rural farming communities in the Philippines become more resilient to devastating disasters and volatile economic conditions.
“Both of us were born poor,” she said, “and it kindled a desire in our hearts to really uplift ourselves and help other people who are like us to gain their voice and be active partners in their development.”
The destructive power of typhoons in the Philippines has intensified by 50% in the past 40 years due to warming seas, according to a North Carolina at Chapel Hill study.
As a resident of rural Philippines, she noticed major gaps in disaster recovery services after Typhoon Haiyan. WAND filled the gaps, bringing water and sanitation solutions, as well as food security programs, to remote villages. Because they’re based in the Philippines, they’re able to provide long-term support.
Building community resilience to disaster, Cora explained, doesn’t happen in a matter of days or months. It takes decades.
“It’s not only about tree planting,” she said, using one of WAND’s Typhoon Haiyan projects as an example. “It’s about tree growing. You have to monitor the trees you planted to make sure they grow.”
Reforestation is important, Cora said, but the people WAND collaborates are the real key to disaster resilience.

“Before, the rural folks used to only be on the sidelines, but now because of our engagement, training, and partnering, some of them have become village leaders and counselors. Women are involved in cooperatives. They are now agents and stakeholders in their communities.”

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