CLTS Foundation

Welcome to CLTS Foundation

Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) is an innovative approach for empowering communities to completely eliminate open defecation (OD) and to begin the journey towards a sustained improvement in public health. It focuses on igniting a change in collective hygiene behaviour, which is achieved through a process of collective local action stimulated by facilitators from within or outside the community. CLTS involves no hardware subsidy and does not prescribe latrine models.

Dr. Kamal Kar pioneered CLTS in Bangladesh in 1999. Since then it has been introduced and implemented in 51 to 54 countries across the globe.It has been incorporated in the National Sanitation Strategy of at least 18 countries of which 14 are in Africa and the rest in Asia.

The CLTS Foundation works through an international team of professionals, practitioners, researchers and policy experts towards building capacity and influencing policy for enhancing access to sanitation to millions through CLTS.