Global Journal of Science Frontier Research, H: Environment & Earth Science, Volume 22 Issue 1

(GoG) revised the National Sanitation Policy of 1999 (Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development (Plan International, Ghana, 2013)to update its scope and to address the underlying causes of poor sanitation and improve the health of the citizens. The national environmental and sanitation policy in Ghana had a co- ordinating council mandated to acquire and protect lands for the purpose of treatment and disposal of waste; to encourage public and private developers to factor waste management in their developmental plans; to streamline the cost and payment of sanitation services; ensure the ownership of household toilets; to introduce environmental and sanitation day that will be celebrated once a year and to established bylaws to regulate sanitation and prevent pollution in their districts (Plan International, Ghana, 2015). GoG also adopted the CLTS approach as a national strategy for expanding sanitation and hygiene practices, and developed an open defecation free (ODF) protocol for assessing communities’ ODF status, and systems of award and recognition of ODF communities. Factors that enabled the implementation of CLTS and which could contribute to its sustainability in Ghana are supportive government policies and strategies and national guidelines for CLTS implementation, and CLTS coordinating committees (Crocker and Bogle, 2015) . CLTS is a relatively new approach, with both opportunities and challenges. CLTS may not be sustainable (Guiteras et al., 2015) as it is appropriate in high baseline open defecation (Crocker et al., 2016) and high social capital (Cameron et al., 2015) . CLTS is more sustainable where there is a supportive enabling environment such as sufficient follow-up visits, market- access to latrine products and materials and socially cohesive of communities (Hanchett et al., 2011; Mukherjee et al., 2012; Tyndale-Biscoe et al., 2013;C avill et al., 2014) . There is limited literature on the impacts and sustainability of CLTS (Garn et al., 2016) , and creating longer term reports on sanitation impacts is a new research priority (Waddington et al., 2009) . The concept of CLTS began in the year 2000 and has since being adopted by over 60 countries including Ghana. These countries have included CLTS in their national policies (Institute of Development Studies, 2016) . CLTS appealed to strong emotions such as self-respect, shame and disgust. A central tenet of the approach is that behavior change occurs when emotional responses are combined with cognitive understanding. CLTS uses three main triggers to bring about behavior change. Direct observation of defecation practices, hands-on demonstration and handling of feces provoke shame and disgust when participants realize that feces can get into the body through the mouth. If this trigger is effectively executed, a collective sense of urgency for change is created. Instead of focusing on households, CLTS creates a collective sense of disgust and uses peer pressure to generate a need for collective action. CLTS uses public, visual monitoring of achievement and recognition of successes. It maintains the momentum of change by motivating pride and competition to boost the household’s commitments in public. A potential weakness of CLTS is that the effectiveness of the triggering process depends on external factors such as the quality of the facilitation, and the degree of participation by the community (Crocker et al., 2016) . The benefits of CLTS include not having to go out before dawn or after dark, safety from the associated risks of violence and sexual abuse, time saved and less embarrassment (Crocker and Bogle, 2015) . As a result of these benefits, several agencies collaborate in implementing CLTS in rural communities. Among them are UNICEF, USAID, SNV Netherland Development Organization, Global Communities, Water Aid Ghana, World Vision International, and local organizations such as Pres by Water, Catholic Relief Services (CRS) and Afram Plains Development Organization (APDO). CLTS is participatory and generally includes capacity building in addressing open defecation (Kar and Chambers, 2008; Pickering et al., 2015) . Their successes have been the provision of water, sanitation and hygiene through participatory rural appraisal (PRA) techniques (Crocker et al., 2016) . In CLTS the communities understand that the process is a shift towards a zero subsidy approach rather than providing them with money to construct latrines. In earlier studies by Crocker et al., (2016) in Ghana, it was found that open defecation has decreased in CLTS implemented communities. Also, health extension worker-facilitated CLTS performed better than teacher-facilitated CLTS in Ethiopia (Crocker et al., 2016) .It is reported that the Northern Region ranks third highest among ten Regions with 72.9 percent open defecation. Since the inception of CLTS in the Northern Region, many interventions have been made and the Mion District is at the verge of attaining district’s wide ODF status. However, no impact study has been conducted to assess its successes and sustainability. The study therefore intends to assess the determining factors of achieving ODF status using socio- demographic and economic status of household heads in the Mion District. II. S tudy A rea and M ethodology a) Study Design The study employed the use of quantitative technique to collect the data. Quantitative research is a formal, objective and systematic process in which numerical data is collected and utilized to obtain information about the work. Structured questionnaires were used for the quantitative data (JMP, 2012)and confirmed by observation and interview with staff of the Mion District Assembly using the indicators below: © 2022 Global Journals 1 Year 2022 28 Global Journal of Science Frontier Research Volume XXII Issue ersion I VI ( H ) Assessing the Determinants of Open Defecation Free Communities b ased on the Socio-Demographic and Economic Status of Household Heads in the Mion District of Northern Region, Ghana