Inspiration

Sama Sama is a sanitation social enterprise that was founded in 2016 and sells pour-flush latrines across 31 districts of Ghana. Leveraging Sama Sama’s existing network, operations, and reach, iDE explored how to best increase women’s ability to participate in sanitation value chains across the country by conducting research rooted in human-centered design methodologies.

Empowering women to participate in the sanitation supply chain, can have significant impacts on changing systemic gender inequalities. However, there is limited research on these topics in the African context.

By utilizing HCD, iDE worked to discover opportunities and challenges for women: 1) working in the Sama Sama social enterprise, 2) for women toilet business co-owners, 3) for Sama Sama women customers, and 4) for Sama Sama latrine end users.

In the CREATE phase the team worked to design tools and techniques to support women 1) Sama Sama enterprise women employees, 2) toilet businesses women owners, and 3) to improve the use of latrines by people of all genders and ages. Notably, as a co-creation tool, the team used the Multilane Highway Tool which allows multi-stakeholder participation to determine where all the stakeholders start on the road relative to the problem and the final goals of gender equality and improved sanitation.

In order to fully understand the barriers that exist for women in the sanitation value chain, the iDE utilized the following HCD tools (with user consent) for the DISCOVER phase of this work:

In the CREATE phase the team worked to design tools and techniques to support women 1) Sama Sama enterprise women employees, 2) toilet businesses women owners, and 3) to improve the use of latrines by people of all genders and ages. Notably, as a co-creation tool, the team used the Multilane Highway tool which allows multi-stakeholder participation to determine where all the stakeholders start on the road relative to the problem and the final goals of gender equality and improved sanitation.

Using the insights uncovered, the Sama Sama team employed a multi-prong strategy to embed gender equality through all levels of the organization. In order to reach customers of all genders, sales agents adjusted their promotion strategies, ensuring they found women at the market. An outcome of this process was the need for organization-wide gender training sessions and associated action plans to reinforce the lessons learned in those trainings. The action plans focus on ensuring that employees of all genders have the opportunities for work life balance, professional growth within the organization, and pay equity.

Sama Sama has also created the Women's Empowerment Network (WEN), which serves as a space for female employees to support one another. The network invites both external speakers and Sama Sama staff to reflect on their experiences as professional women in often male-dominated industries and are known to host meaningful conversations. Many women employees run separate businesses outside of work hours, and point to the WEN as one of the reasons they were able to start this additional income stream for their families.

In 2022, Sama Sama invested in an onsite nursery with a full time nanny to allow mothers to show up at work, knowing their little ones are close by and can easily be checked on during the day.