In order for TA Kalumbu to have increased number of improved latrines and people move up sanitation ladder, Hygiene Village Project implemented the sanitation and hygiene promotion using the 2008 Ministry of Water Development and Irrigation�s Sanitation Marketing Strategy.

Sanitation marketing creates a demand for a sanitation product, service, or practice. It promotes improved sanitation practices. It is based on the understanding that the provision of hardware (toilets) is not enough to eliminate open defecation or unsafe sanitation practices. Sanitation marketing ensures that the hardware, the appropriate media mix, and the required enabling environment are all in place. It identifies where people are on the sanitation ladder and moves them up by providing multiple options. Sanitation marketing can ensure that people choose what they want and are willing to pay for; what is financially sustainable; and what is cost-effective and can be taken to scale

Hygiene Village Project is aware that sanitation marketing has proved to work in both peri-urban and rural setting. Hygiene Village Project intensified community mobilization meetings, so that people remove the perception that people in the rural are poor. Concentration centered on achieving Behavior Change and moving up the sanitation ladder since the ultimate goal of any sanitation and hygiene strategy is to affect change in health conditions and the behaviors that improve those conditions within the communities and households while encouraging healthy practices and increase the likelihood that the practice will be adopted and that it can be sustained.

Hygiene Village Project did not only ensure the upgrading/installment of improved latrines, but more importantly, developed a wide business environment that allowed businesses to thrive by continuing to provide sanitation services to existing clients (households). All the necessary training to ensure that sanitation services are effectively developed was included in the project. Hygiene Village Project developed and strengthened sanitation businesses in the TA that were:

• Viable
• Adaptable to changing conditions on the ground
• Incentivized to seek out new clients

The options for sanitation businesses to sell, with the entire necessary builder training, included:

• Improved latrines � New construction or upgrading
• Sand cement screed (upgrading the smeared floor to cement floor)
• Ecological Sanitation options with linkages to commercial fertilizer markets, so that households have a financial incentive to use a latrine

Another approach used was Hygiene promotion . The initiative focused on three interrelated and interconnected domains that increased the likelihood of sustainable behavioral change. These interrelated and interconnected domains are: hand washing with soap, safe disposal of feces and safe storage and usage of drinking water. This hygiene promotion complements the Ministry of Health emphasis on hand washing with soap and improved hygiene behavior.

The project which is still going on has so far seen the construction of 600 improved latrines in T/A Kalumbu. One major outcome of the project is that Hygiene Village Project has facilitated the attainment of ODF for T/A Kalumbu � This is the first T/A in Lilongwe to Attain ODF.