Contact details

Submitted by: Marine Ricau, Octopus project coordinator.

Email: [email protected] 

Website: https://octopus.solidarites.org/

Introduction to the project

Location

Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh 

Rakhine, Myanmar 

Duration

Started January 2019. Phase 2 for the development of the Octopus platform is ending in December 2019, but the platform is still being developed and it should continue over the next couple of years. 

Description

The Octopus is a collaborative online platform that supports knowledge building on faecal sludge disposal and treatment in emergencies.

Project aims

The project aims at assisting sanitation practitioners working in faecal sludge management to make decisions, share their experience and improve their practices, by collecting case studies and lessons learnt on faecal sludge treatment plants from humanitarian contexts. 

Objectives of the Global Compact on Refugees

• Objective 1, Ease the pressures on host countries: The Octopus platform helps the humanitarian community improve their response in Faecal Sludge Management. This results in better sludge treatment and less environmental pollution and health risks. It helps lower the pressure on existing infrastructure caused by the increased demand by more people in the area.  

• Objective 2, Enhance refugee self-reliance: Implementing and operating faecal sludge treatment plants includes training local staff, usually refugees themselves, so they gain technical and management skills. 

Resources

Two consecutive fundings from the Humanitarian Innovation Fund helped develop the platform.  

Strong support from the international WASH partners ensured that the platform is now well known and used across the sector.

Partners

• Solidarités International 
• Global WASH Cluster 
• Oxfam

Challenges and how they were overcome

It is difficult to get the field practitioners to contribute to the website content, by filling out case studies on faecal sludge treatment plants.  

We defined a case study management process, including the case studies’ collection and review, which is based on the sanitation TWiGs created for a crisis. The field practitioners are required to fill out the case studies as part of the TWiGs’ work plan.

Results of the Good Practice

Better faecal sludge treatment means less health issues for the host and refugee population, and less environmental pollution. 

Next steps

• The platform will continue to be developed. 
• We will add more content to the website, with additional case studies from other contexts.  
• We will upgrade the content management system of the website to ensure a better user engagement. 
• We will include virtual visits of the treatment plants to the case studies.