Strength of solidarity to campaign together

The dreams of sanitation campaigners were shattered by the news of sad demise of supreme national leaders. The chaos and confusion was everywhere in the country. There was a huge hope that he would not die so soon at least not before the campaign. All the dreams and hope would never come true in life that taught us to move ahead with courage.



Photo courtesy: Kantipur publications

The campaigners were relieved that they had initiated their queue in the supermarket. The volunteers were putting all their efforts to convince the customers to join the queue in thesupport of the people who were deprived of their basic right of sanitation. It was not that tough for people to convince therefore the campaigners received support from more than 10,000 customers of the supermarket. It did not mean that there were not people who were there to argue against the campaign as they believed on service delivery than campaigning. The crux of sustainable development paradigm was that there should be intermix of both service delivery and influencing for increasing the wider coverage of the development interventions.


Photo courtesy: Anita Pradhan, WAN

Solidarity brought diversity and beauty out of these differences in thinking and doing things differently. Perfectionist would prefer everything in order. The reality of success had shown that it preferred chaordic path which would be combination of chaos and order. The campaign in Nepal looked very chaos from external eyes with several things happening at a time as there were queue organized in 28 districts. The gatherings in remote areas varied in number and campaigning design but the cause was something that bound them all together in a single string as a garland of different flowers.


Photo courtesy: NEWAH

Health professional joined the campaign in organizing series of events outside and inside Kathmandu. The queue near the hospital was another form to generate support from other health stakeholders. They submitted the appeal letter demanding the right of sanitation to Local Development Officer in Kathmandu.


Photo courtesy: WAN

Main campaign event of the queue had to be postponed due to death of the supreme leader. These last minute changes did not shattered the strength of the campaigners. They were further united and came up with the alternative plan to organize series of side events on the 22 March 2010. There was strength in unity that had been proved by the success of the campaigners in organizing World Longest Toilet Queue events in 22 different parts of Kathmandu and Lalitpur only on the single day. The solidarity of the campaigners was remarkable who stood with each other and delivered their best contribution for raising supporters to make stand for sanitation and water for all.


Photo courtesy: NGOFUWS

The campaign at Nepal was different from previous years in several ways. Series of interactions and meetings with other organizations and stakeholders was immense. The meeting had been fruitful as there had been preparation of talking points followed by series of in-house meetings to ensure convincing presentation with the external audiences. It had enabled the campaigners to join hands with 24 organizations ranging from Bhatbhateni Supermarket to Patan Community Based Rehabilitation Organization.

Interactions with external agencies made the campaigners realized that the concept of inclusive campaign should be promoted where youth, children and disabled communities will not be simply invited for the campaign but also provided equal opportunity to share the campaign platform. There were photographic exhibition based on last year’s dirrhoeal epidemic and poster competition led by youth networks, children painting competition allowing children to show their sanitation expressions, wall cartoon exhibition led by Patan Community Based Rehabilitation Organization working for differently abled communities; traditional music, sanitation coverage map, sanitation theme based drama, menstrual hygiene installation art led by the group of artists were some of the events that helped to create the feeling of the inclusive campaigning.


Photo courtesy: WAN

Creativity in the campaigning was prominent in spreading campaign messages. The wall paint with the logo and message of the campaign together with hoarding boards with series of the blunt messages were the earlier messages that went to the wider audiences. These hoarding boards were talk of the town for several days. There were some articles in the media based on the campaign issues together with series of interview both in radio and television channels. The promotional materials of the event comprised of wrist band and t-shirts for volunteers for showing the solidarity for the cause with the amplifying note.

Measuring the outcomes of the campaign had always been a challenging task. Shared calendars were experimented together with the bigger wall calendars. The visualization of the campaigning process performed almost in daily basis helped to create clarity and common understanding in the process. Experimental report card had been initiated to measure the outcomes of the campaign that would still need some improvement.

Campaigning together with diverse communities definitely taught good lessons. There should have regular face to face interactions than relying on online communications that would have brought more clarity on the future directions and increase team building with sharing of responsibilities. The campaigning required more time and effort for planning so there should be adequate time and human resources to plan ahead of time to ensure effectiveness. There should have been proper documentation plan so that all these recordings, photographs and video clippings would have been shared promptly without compromising the quality.

In the nutshell, the campaign provided us several insights that we could use for our future campaigns. On the top of that, the solidarity of our campaigners was something that touched me most. I salute you all and thank you for being so cooperative we managed to cover up our challenge brought forward by the sad demise of the supreme leader.


Photo courtesy: NEPHA