Features

Case Study: Kimberly-Clark’s Commitment to Expanding Sanitation in India

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According to World Health Organisation figures, some 2.3 billion people around the globe lack access to proper sanitation. It is estimated that a quarter of these people live in India. PublicAffairsAsia explores the Gold Standard Award winning efforts by Kimberly-Clark in the country


Research suggests 23 percent of Indian girls drop out of school on reaching puberty, and that access to safe and hygienic toilets could increase their attendance by 11 percent.

Kimberly-Clark is committed to helping society by providing communities with access to sanitation. In keeping with the United Nations’ Sustainability Development Goals, one of which is “access to water and sanitation”, Kimberly-Clark’s global “Toilets Change Lives” programme has improved access to sanitation in Latin America and Africa since its inception in 2014 .

In India, applying the learnings from this flagship programme and integrating them with feedback from government stakeholders and NGO partners, the company is approaching the sanitation issue from a different angle: restoring and maintaining school toilets for sustained impact .

Since the launch of the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (Clean India Mission) in October 2014 , the ministry of drinking water and sanitation’s website indicates that 45 million toilets have been built in rural India alone.

Building new toilets, however, addresses only one aspect of the problem. The bigger challenge is the lack of  maintenance for the toilets after they have been built. This is especially true in schools where toilets often remain unused because of their condition. Girls may even find them unsafe. UNICEF data suggest that four out of 10 school toilets are unusable or dysfunctional due to lack of regular maintenance. In rural India, one in every two toilets in schools is unusable, leading to continued open defecation.

India reports the highest number of diarrhoea deaths among children under five, open defecation being the main reason.

Kimberly-Clark, aiming for children to want to use the toilets and feel a sense of ownership for their upkeep, decided to focus its corporate social responsibility effort on refurbishing toilets in schools and keeping them clean and functional.

In April 2016 it launched the “Toilets Change Lives (TCL) India” programme, aiming to deliver sustained impact by maintaining toilets rather than building new ones.

It partnered with Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) India on 105 sanitation restoration projects across schools and daycare centres in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana, West Bengal and Maharashtra. Interventions ranged from fixing a door latch for privacy, attaching soap dispensers in wash basins or replacing broken commodes to more fundamental ones like paving the floor to prevent slips and falls, removing water clogging, repairing flushing systems and regular cleaning of septic tanks.

In addition, to encourage long-term behavioural change, it engaged school authorities, deploying resources for specific repairs or renovation and setting up hygiene clubs where children learn and advocate good toilet habits.
As a co-founder of the Toilet Board Coalition, a public-private partnership of global and multilateral organisations, Kimberly-Clark is also investing to accelerate innovation in sanitation.

Through the coalition’s toilet accelerator programme , it is incentivising “sanipreneurs” to develop business models that can scale toilet innovations — new service models, new ways of waste recovery for the circular economy of waste management, and new digital applications that can address sanitation issues in India.

The work in schools has had a direct impact on the lives of some 30,000 schoolchildren and teachers. The enrolment of students has gone up and fewer girls have dropped out.

In 2017 Kimberly-Clark renewed its promise to maintaining every single one of the toilets in the programme and to undertake repairs and the renovation of toilets in more schools. Supporting Kimberly-Clark’s Sustainability 2022 strategy, which aims to improve the lives of 25 million people in need, the TCL India campaign demonstrated its commitment to creating social value in the communities where it operates.

According to World Health Organisation figures, some 2.3 billion people around the globe lack access to proper sanitation. It is estimated that a quarter of these people live in India.

Research suggests 23 percent of Indian girls drop out of school on reaching puberty, and that access to safe and hygienic toilets could increase their attendance by 11 percent.

Kimberly-Clark is committed to helping society by providing communities with access to sanitation. In keeping with the United Nations’ Sustainability Development Goals, one of which is “access to water and sanitation”, Kimberly-Clark’s global “Toilets Change Lives” programme has improved access to sanitation in Latin America and Africa since its inception in 2014 .

In India, applying the learnings from this flagship programme and integrating them with feedback from government stakeholders and NGO partners, the company is approaching the sanitation issue from a different angle: restoring and maintaining school toilets for sustained impact .

Since the launch of the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (Clean India Mission) in October 2014 , the ministry of drinking water and sanitation’s website indicates that 45 million toilets have been built in rural India alone.

Building new toilets, however, addresses only one aspect of the problem. The bigger challenge is the lack of  maintenance for the toilets after they have been built. This is especially true in schools where toilets often remain unused because of their condition. Girls may even find them unsafe. UNICEF data suggest that four out of 10 school toilets are unusable or dysfunctional due to lack of regular maintenance. In rural India, one in every two toilets in schools is unusable, leading to continued open defecation.

India reports the highest number of diarrhoea deaths among children under five, open defecation being the main reason.

Kimberly-Clark, aiming for children to want to use the toilets and feel a sense of ownership for their upkeep, decided to focus its corporate social responsibility effort on refurbishing toilets in schools and keeping them clean and functional.

In April 2016 it launched the “Toilets Change Lives (TCL) India” programme, aiming to deliver sustained impact by maintaining toilets rather than building new ones.

It partnered with Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) India on 105 sanitation restoration projects across schools and daycare centres in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana, West Bengal and Maharashtra. Interventions ranged from fixing a door latch for privacy, attaching soap dispensers in wash basins or replacing broken commodes to more fundamental ones like paving the floor to prevent slips and falls, removing water clogging, repairing flushing systems and regular cleaning of septic tanks.

In addition, to encourage long-term behavioural change, it engaged school authorities, deploying resources for specific repairs or renovation and setting up hygiene clubs where children learn and advocate good toilet habits.

As a co-founder of the Toilet Board Coalition, a public-private partnership of global and multilateral organisations, Kimberly-Clark is also investing to accelerate innovation in sanitation.

Through the coalition’s toilet accelerator programme , it is incentivising “sanipreneurs” to develop business models that can scale toilet innovations — new service models, new ways of waste recovery for the circular economy of waste management, and new digital applications that can address sanitation issues in India.

The work in schools has had a direct impact on the lives of some 30,000 schoolchildren and teachers. The enrolment of students has gone up and fewer girls have dropped out.

In 2017 Kimberly-Clark renewed its promise to maintaining every single one of the toilets in the programme and to undertake repairs and the renovation of toilets in more schools. Supporting Kimberly-Clark’s Sustainability 2022 strategy, which aims to improve the lives of 25 million people in need, the TCL India campaign demonstrated its commitment to creating social value in the communities where it operates.


Kimberly-Clark won The 2017 Gold Standard Award for Corporate Citizenship in India sponsored By EON – The stakeholder relations group

Visit The Gold Standard Awards website