11/20/2020
SATO is continually working towards improving access to sanitation for all. This includes empowering communities with skills to improve sanitation access while at the same time running sustainable businesses. Through free SATO training programs, more than 19,000 masons across Asia and Africa have joined the journey towards making sanitation accessible for all.
In Tanzania, SATO has just completed a free training session for masons in Ifakara, a town in Kilombero District, Morogoro Region, south-central Tanzania. Dozens of masons learned how to install the SATO Toilet pans and stools. This is not a one-city event; mason-trainings are taking place all over Africa and beyond.
In Tanzania, SATO has just completed a free training session for masons in Ifakara, a town in Kilombero District, Morogoro Region, south-central Tanzania. Dozens of masons learned how to install the SATO Toilet pans and stools. This is not a one-city event; mason-trainings are taking place all over Africa and beyond.
4,000 kilometers to the west, Amara Nwoye and Kenechukwu Odugu, both Nigerian nationals, are other examples of SATO’s sustainability legacy. Nwoye, a female mason from Enugu, started installing SATO toilet solutions in December 2018 and has installed three SATO stools and 35 SATO pans. Kenechukwu, her colleague from the same city, is a true SATO-veteran mason and stockist. He has been selling and installing SATO Toilet Solutions for five years now and has installed more than 3,000 units.
The free training of masons is a key element of SATO’s mission: creating sustainable partnerships on the ground. SATO, part of LIXIL, was never just another enterprise: it is a self-sustaining social business that establishes local make/sell/use cycles in the community. A cadre of trained builders not only brings communities better sanitation but also creates jobs and allows local manufacturers and stakeholders to continue the work by themselves.
And then there is India. Masons are an essential part of SATO’s reach into the vast rural network of the country. Masons are influencers who are trusted by the end customer and they are the ones who install the SATO toilets across households. SATO understands that once the masons see the positives of using a SATO Toilet, they become the company’s spokespeople. The SATO Mason training varies from 4 hours to 3 days, depending on the experience of the mason and the type of relationship being developed. The trainings are held at the retailer/distributor counters or at sites with social change partners such as Finnish society.
Women empowerment
As Amara from Nigeria already showed, it is not a men-only training. Although the field is still largely male-dominated, an increasing number of trained masons are women, empowered by the SATO training programme.
On International Women’s Day 2018 SATO partnered with Samarthan, a leading non-profit organization in India, to organize training workshops for women masons in Ashta village of Sehore district, Madhya Pradesh state.
Samarthan and its partner Small Industries Development Bank of India conducted a rigorous 32 hours long training programme to empower female masons to make a better living for their families. Over the course of a few months, 200 female masons were trained and went on to install 600 SATO units.
Sunita Bai was one of the participants of the workshop in Ashta. “This training session has helped each one of us. We can now not only build toilets but also earn a respectable living out of it. I will urge everyone in my village to promote the building of toilets for the women in their families,” Ms. Bai added.