Finnish-Ukrainian NGOs cooperation for promotion of sustainable sanitation technologies: dry toilets

Ukrainian Project participant:              All-Ukrainian environmental NGO "MAMA-86"
Finnish Counterpart organisation:        the Global Dry Toilet Club (GDTC) of Finland
Project duration:                                1 February — 1 April 2007

Project was supported and funded by the Embassy of the Finland in Ukraine

Project Goals:

• Gathering and exchange of NGOs’ experience and good practices exchange on dry ecosan toilets implementation in Finland and in Ukraine;
• Promote ecosanitation approach and dry toilet technology in Ukraine;
• Develop the good cooperative relations between Ukrainian and Finnish NGOs.

Activities implemented:

1. During February 2007 the Dry Toilet Guide was developed by project partners. The DT Guide included two parts : guide itself prepared by Kati Hinkkanen from GDTC of Finland and the materials on MAMA-86’s experience on DTs, including the wastewaters management problems of rural areas of  Ukraine  and the existed legal framework for the DT introduction in Ukraine, prepared by Anna Tsvietkova from "MAMA-86". The DT Guide was published and presented at the Finnish-Ukrainian NGOs’ Seminar. PDF version of DT Guide can be downloaded from MAMA-86 website.

2. On 24th March 2007 the Ukrainian-Finnish Joint Seminar on dry toilet promotion experience exchange was held in Kyiv. 29 participants, including 2 representatives of the Global Dry toilet Club of Finland: Kati Hinkkanen  and Anna Kuhmonen; representatives of the Embassy of Finland in Ukraine and representatives of  different stakeholders and MAMA-86 network took part in the Seminar. The participants come from 12 cities and rural areas of Ukraine: Kyiv, Odessa, Feodosia, Artemivsk, Sevastopol, Mykilajv, Ternopil, Nova Kakhovka, Yaremche, Poltava, Nizhyn, Tatarbunary. Among the participants there were the representatives of MAMA-86 network, farmers, business, scientists, experts on waste waters management, students.

Jukka Pajarinen, the Second Secretary of the Embassy welcomed the Seminar participants and expressed the hope for a fruitful discussion and further cooperation of the Finnish and Ukrainian NGOs. There were 4 key presentations: "Dry toilet: building experience and promotion by GDTC of Finland" by Kati Hinkkanen  and Anna Kuhmonen, GDTC of Finland; "Gozhuly experience on dry toilet building and maintenance" by Juliya Berezhna, MAMA-86-Poltava; "Vorokhta private dry toilets" by Roman Kudrin, MAMA-86-Yaremche; "Bobryk experience on school and private dry toilets" by Igor Shchokin, MAMA-86-Nizhyn. All presentations were actively discussed by the participants. The DT Guide was presented by Anna Tsvietkova and disseminated among the participants. 
During the seminar there were expressed the interest from Ukrainian and Finnish participants on the usefulness of the experiences which accumulated by the partners and the wiliness to use the GDTC’s experience on DT in Ukraine as it is well adapted to the cold climate conditions. The GDT experts expressed the interest to learn more about urine diverting DT for promotion in Finland. The participants expressed the big interest for future common activities and project implementation.

The results of the project are:

• The DT Guide in Ukrainian developed and published.
• MAMA-86 network developed the knowledge on ecosan technology, especially on indoor Dry toilets and on options for adaptation of Dry toilets to the cold climate conditions.
• The obtained lessons of first ecosan toilets building in Ukraine as well as the options for model improvement were discussed with Finnish experts.
• the capacity of MAMA-86 network was developed for future promotion of ecosan.
• good relations between MAMA-86 and the Global Dry Toilet Club of Finland were established for future promotion of ecosanitation, particularly dry toilets in Ukraine.