Get Started

If you are an NGO, agency or government institution and want to run your own Toilets Making the Grade® competition, we are happy to help you with a step-by-step guide.

What You Need

As you may have read in the Methodology section, Toilets Making the Grade® is a flexible and adaptable concept that can be tailored to different contexts. The following project steps are relevant for your planning as an implementer:

To run a smooth competition, a well done preparation is key. Ensure that you have enough time before you kick off Toilets Making the Grade® at the school to select governmental and non-governmental partners, finalise planning, find sufficient funding, adapt the methodology and produce all materials based on a short context analysis as suggested through our Toilets Making the Grade® Kick-Off Questionnaire. We recommend to approach donors for funding as soon as you can.

Preparations usually start several months before the kick-off of your TMG competition. The duration of the competition from launch to award ceremony often takes around 3–6 months, depending on the context like school terms.

The methodology and templates for tools are available. We recommend to adjust the materials to fit exactly to your context. This can include adapting (maybe also translating) the manual, proposal entry form for schools or the jury assessment process. The Toilets Making the Grade® team can help you with this step, if you wish.

A key element of Toilets Making the Grade® is involving politicians and the public. You need to have a strategy on how and when to involve which media to give you the best reach. Also, we recommend to appoint a Toilets Making the Grade® patron based on their popularity among students, head teachers and their public reach.

The actual implementation for the schools can be done by different actors. So far both national and international partners have been involved. These can be national government, local government, NGOs or bilateral partners. The Toilets Making the Grade® team can take on a supporting role. The actual implementation includes the partner and activity coordination, the interactions with the schools, the organisation of the jury process and the awarding ceremony with prizes, as well as the follow up with evaluation.

Ideally, Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning (MEAL) interventions are already considered during planning. Results can be used to improve possible future implementations, like formalising lessons learned or supporting the acquisition of funds through prove of impact. The Toilets Making the Grade® team is happy to give input and collaborate.

Use Our Online Platform

In your implementation, you can choose to use our webplatform.

Implementers can manage most activities here. Schools can use the online platform to get information, register and upload their entries. Juries can then access and judge the entries.

Registration

Simplify the registration of participants through online forms and control the registration centrally.

Registration to enter the competition is done online via an easy-to-use form. This way, schools can form teams and they will see all the deadlines within the competition online. At the same time, you as an organisation or authority can collect data about the participants, e.g. gender and age. Gone are the days when you had to travel to many schools to get a registration for the competition.

Manage all registrations centrally in one system online and keep track of everything.

Submission

Let participants submit their solutions online - on a computer or a smart phone.

Online submissions have many advantages for participants. Submitted entries can still be edited until the deadline. In addition, the online form guides you step by step through a chain of questions and arguments that help to analyse and solve the respective problems. Submissions can be completed online as text and supplemented with images, videos, sketches and more.

Judging

Give the jury an overview of all the submissions, their work progress and let them rate online.

The jury of a Toilets Making the Grade® competition is given personalised access to a securely protected area of the website. There, all submitted entries can be managed and evaluated. The judging process can be interrupted and saved at any time. In addition, the percentage of entries to be judged that has already been processed is displayed. The online system for awarding points is easy to use and allows communication among the jury members.

Presentation

Present the winners and participants with picture galleries and videos and increase the desire to participate.

On the website that implementers create through a modular system, contributions of the participants can be shown in picture and video galleries and the winners can be highlighted. This way, interested schools can follow the success of the respective competitions and are encouraged to participate themselves.

If you are interested in running a Toilets Making the Grade® competition, please answer the questions after clicking the button. This will enable us to respond to your exact needs as soon as possible.

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