Despite causing the decrease of crowd activities, COVID-19 pandemic is also pushing the changes on behavior and lifestyle of societies. However, on the bright side we can find that societies, especially in Sumbawa Region, become more educated and somehow forced to have a cleaner and healthier lifestyle.
Cooking food instead of buying has become common. Wearing mask when going out has become prevalent. Washing hands before eating has become habitual. People become more aware and voluntary to do healthy lifestyles. As though with this pandemic, people put much more attention to their health and healthy terms as well.
To make those new habits sustainable, all parties should be able to work hand-in-hand. Yayasan Plan International Indonesia (Plan Indonesia) through Water for Women (WfW) project, supported by Plan Australia through Australian Aid, supports the sustainable healthy behavior by creating campaign competition about stop open defecating and washing hands with soaps in eight sub-districts of WfW working areas in Sumbawa.
All groups in societies now have been adapting to a cleaner and healthier lifestyle, and participating to the campaign competition with high spirit and enthusiasm, including Community-led Total Sanitation (CLTS) sub-district teams. According to Syafruddin, a member of Batu Bangka Village CLTS team, people in his village have changed their lifestyle behavior to be cleaner and healthier after participating in the socialization in village level, so when the competition start, people become more creative in making CLTS promotion tools from the material of their areas to be used by their families and to succeed the continuity of CLTS behavior changes campaign during COVID-19 pandemic. (Plan Indonesia/Astri Wulandari Pratiwi)
