Better sanitation, with communities taking the lead

provide some form of subsidy to individual families to reduce the cost of building a toilet. This approach is based on the assumption that both the construction and use of toilets depend on private decisions and on hygiene behaviour at the household level. However, this approach normally results in small, stepby-step changes in sanitation coverage, with further improvements becoming steadily more difficult once early adopters and households with higher incomes have installed sanitation facilities. Few large-scale sanitation programmes of this type have been successful. It may be that households who build toilets under such heavilysubsidised programmes feel less ownership for their facilities and are therefore less inclined to make any lasting improvements to their hygiene behaviour.