The Sanitation Marketing Systems in Bangladesh (SanMarkS) has recently been awarded the prestigious P3 Impact Award for its public-private partnership (P3) approach.
SanMarkS applies Sanitation Marketing, Market Systems Thinking, and Human Centered Design to reach 450,000 poor and disadvantaged rural people by 2019 with better health and wellbeing through improved sanitation. The project began in November 2015 and is jointly funded by SDC and UNICEF and implemented by iDE-Bangladesh.
SanMarkS aims to build household demand and private sector supply of hygienic, affordable latrines by facilitating collaboration between national level manufacturers of latrine parts, local level entrepreneurs, municipalities and the Department of Public Health Engineering. The project promotes the integration of the private sector as a key stakeholder into the existing public and civil society platforms in the sanitation sector in rural areas.
SanMarkS builds the capacity of local latrine producers, their knowledge and technical know-how as well as market promotion strategies to increase their client base.
As a result, (341) local entrepreneurs are now organized. They have formed business associations (sanitary business associations SBA) to leverage their collective skills and buying power. This enables remote customers in villages to access hygienic latrines at affordable prices, while latrine producers who are a part of a business association have seen their sales of hygienic latrines almost double. The local government subsidies to help poor households build latrines are now used more effectively, as the local latrine producers deliver cheaper and more hygienic latrines. The sanitary business associations enforce quality standards among the members and have begun engaging with the local government to create national quality standards for improved latrines. National manufacturers are able to reach new customers who were inaccessible before due to the high cost and logistical challenges of marketing in remote areas. By engaging with a single point of contact from a business association representing several entrepreneurs, companies now have a simple and cost-effective way to distribute their products in sparsely populated rural regions. In this way, SanMarkS builds capacity of the private sector actors to develop products, messages and marketing techniques that will reach specific types of consumers based on household income, assets, lifestyles and other characteristics resulting in better health condi¬tions and well-being.
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