Tunisia: "Houmti Tayyara – My neighbourhood is great" - A new proximity communication based campaign in the waste sector

A new proximity communication based campaign in the waste sector in Tunisia.
How can a central national waste management institution with little community presence be of any help to more than 250 municipalities in their communication with citizens on the topic of waste collection, knowing that each of these municipalities have different ways and times of waste collection and little to no communication capacities?
This is the challenge currently faced by the Tunisian National Waste Management Agency, ANGed. It answered with “Houmti Tayyara”, “my neighborhood is great” in Tunisian Arabic. Houmti Tayyara is a set of communication supports and processes designed to restore the dialogue – and trust - between the municipalities and their citizens on the waste collection issue with the help of local civil society organizations.
In June 2013, with the support of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH through the German-Tunisian Environmental program (PPE), ANGed launched a 6-months-pilot run in 15 neighborhoods all over the country, with the intention to scale it up to all neighborhoods and municipalities willing to participate in 2014. With the help of flyers, stickers, posters, calendars with local information on waste collection modalities, a website (www.houmtitayyara.tn ), a facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/Houmti.tayyara2013) and a mass media campaign on national TV and on billboards, local associations worked hand in hand with municipalities to inform the citizens about the waste collection times and manners. The mass media campaign is based on waste monsters. The TV spots were made with movie quality and intend to attract people’s attention with humor and to lead them to the facebook page and website of Houmti Tayyara.
The idea was, if everybody – the municipalities and the citizen – abide by the waste collection rules, then at least waste collection should work. In order to make sure that both parties abide by the waste collection rules, a “Maalem El Houma”, a neighborhood overseer was introduced. This culturally accepted character is a man or a woman usually well known and accepted in the neighborhood, who goes through the streets and oversees that the waste collection truck comes on time and citizens put their waste out before the truck comes and in the right container. The Maalem El Houma does this voluntarily and works in close collaboration with the municipalities and the associations in charge of sensitization. He writes down his observations and gives a feedback on a weekly basis. At the end of a 3 to 4 months period, 3 winner neighborhoods will be chosen (the best one, the one with the most changes and the one with the greatest potential for change) and will be honored in a national ceremony in the presence of the Secretary of State of Environment. The whole experience will then be evaluated and recommendations will be made for the scaling up. First feedbacks show that maybe there is a need for different communication supports, like big banners and painted billboards in the neighborhood, but also that it is a real challenge for the municipalities to stick to the collection time. On the other hand, the municipalities felt that at least, the dialogue with the citizens was restored, and it is a good basis to try and make changes.

• By Ms. Dominique Thaly
• GIZ Tunisia/ Environmental Programme
• Responsible for environmental communication
• Contact: Dominique.thaly@giz.de
• Further information :
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Houmti.tayyara2013
• Internet: www.houmtitayyara.tn