The Soul Beat 171 - Promoting Hygiene and Sanitation in Africa

From SOUL BEAT AFRICA - where communication and media are central to AFRICA's social and economic development

In this issue of The Soul Beat:

* HYGIENE EDUCATION in schools...
* Information on WORLD WATER DAY...
* MOBILISING COMMUNITIES for better sanitation...
* RECENT REPORT on the state of water and sanitation worldwide...
* TRAINING AND PLANNING TOOLS to improve hygiene...

This issue of The Soul Beat looks at how communication can contribute to the health of communities by supporting activities that address hygiene and sanitation. The newsletter offers programme experiences, evaluations, strategic thinking documents, and resource materials that highlight how communication can help raise awareness and promote behaviours that lead to the maintenance of safe water supplies, handwashing, and other hygienic practices, with a special focus on schools and children, and mobilising communities.

If you would like your organisation's communication work or research and resource documents to be featured on the Soul Beat Africa website and in The Soul Beat newsletters, please contact soulbeat@comminit.com

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HYGIENE EDUCATION FOR CHILDREN AND IN SCHOOLS

1. Raising Clean Hands: Advancing Learning, Health and Participation through WASH in Schools
This document, published in 2010, on the school participation in the water, sanitation, and hygiene education in schools - WASH in Schools - programme calls on decision-makers to increase investments and on concerned stakeholders to plan and act in cooperation so that all children go to a school with child-friendly water, sanitation, and hygiene facilities. The document explains: the goals and potential benefits of the WASH programme; strategies for construction of hygiene facilitates for children and provision of soap and safe water; and the facilitation of deworming services and hygiene education to prevent re-exposure and re-infestation.

2. Sopo Hand-Washing Campaign - Malawi
Initiated in August 2008 under the umbrella of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)'s accelerated child survival and development programme, this project involved a multi-media campaign in Malawi designed to promote hand-washing with soap in order to decrease child mortality and illness, specifically diarrhoea and other pathogenic diseases caused by poor hygienic practices. The animated character "Sopo" appears in newspapers, on radio, on billboards, as well as in a 13-minute animated short film, using the slogan "Did you wash your hands?" In addition to targeting caregivers, the campaign is also designed for children, recognising children as champions for promoting improved hygiene.

3. WASH-Friendly Schools Training Guide for Parents, Teachers and Student Leaders
This training guide, published by the Hygiene Improvement Project in 2010, promotes the WASH in Schools movement to create and maintain “WASH-Friendly Schools” that have safe and healthy environments, including adequate facilities for hygiene and sanitation that allow children to be healthier and more attentive. The guide is intended to help teachers, parents, and students work together to carry out a plan for making their school WASH-friendly.

4. Project WET's Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Education Programme in Africa
To raise awareness of the importance of water, sanitation, and hygiene, and to promote actions and behaviours with positive outcomes, the Project WET Foundation, with the support of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Africa Education Initiative, developed a series of hands-on education materials for sub-Saharan African teachers and students. Since 2007, the materials have reached more than 23,000 schools, 239,000 teachers and 10,000,000 students in sub-Saharan Africa.

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WORLD WATER DAY

March 22 2011 is World Water Day. Click here for more information and campaign materials.

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COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION AND MOBILISATION

5. Comparing Rural Sanitation Campaigns in Mozambique: Lessons and Considerations for Achieving Sustainable Results
By Antonio Mirasse
This case study, published by the Netherlands Development Organisation (SNV) in 2009, was produced to reflect on the rationale and success factors of the implementation of different approaches to community participation and community mobilisation in water, sanitation, and hygiene programmes in Mozambique. The paper serves as a means to document experiences gained during the implementation of the different approaches. It includes reflections from the SNV Mozambique’s WASH team, the government's water sectors, and the implementing agencies of the "One Million Initiative."

6. Urban Water and Sanitation in Ghana: How Local Action is Making a Difference
This paper, published by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) in 2010, is one of five case studies that were part of an IIED coordinated research project funded by Swedish International Development Co-operation Agency (Sida), the Royal Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (DANIDA), and the Department for International Development (DFID) entitled "Improving Water and Sanitation Provision Globally through Information and Action Driven Locally." The main goals were to contribute towards the improvement of water supply and sanitation in low-income urban settlements so that the water, sanitation, and slum improvement targets of the Millennium Development Goals can be achieved. This paper demonstrates how community-led savings, enumerations, and exchange programmes have strengthened local capacity empowering communities to lead the change process.

7. Village Water Hygiene and Sanitation programmes - Zambia
Operating in the Western Province of Zambia since 2004, Village Water works to provide wells, sanitation equipment, and hygiene education to rural communities. The project employs the strategy of Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS), a method of encouraging good hygiene and sanitation practice which emphasises community action and behaviour change. Field workers work with the local community to analyse their sanitation problems, and work together with the community to find locally appropriate solutions.

8. Towards Total Sanitation: Social-Cultural Barriers and Triggers to Total Sanitation in West Africa
This report, published by WaterAid in 2009, is a regional synthesis of a series of in-country studies carried out to identify the socio-cultural barriers to improved sanitation specific to communities in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Mali, and Nigeria. In these countries, the practice of open defecation is surrounded by cultural taboos and beliefs particular to many of the ethno-linguistic groups who live there. While total sanitation techniques such as Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) have been generally successful in West Africa, some communities where WaterAid works are particularly resistant to abandoning open defecation.

9. Hygiene Education through Multimedia Tools: Lessons Learned
This brief from 2009 provides lessons learned from a hygiene education through multimedia tools project implemented in Burkina Faso by Sahel Solidarité with the support of the International Institute for Communication and Development (IICD). Since 2005, Sahel Solidarité has worked with Water Aid in the field of hygiene and sanitation promotion to change behaviours. Through participative methods, the project team and trained village hygienists used multimedia tools to raise awareness and discussion among the population about good hygiene and sanitation practices.

10. Zimbabwe WASH Radio Campaign - Zimbabwe
From July to November 2009, the Institute of Water and Sanitation Development (IWSD), in collaboration with Zimbabwe Broadcasting Holdings, implemented the WASH Radio Campaign in Zimbabwe to educate communities about healthy practices related to water, sanitation, and hygiene and empower them to advocate for change. The campaign broadcast a radio series called "A Clean Zimbabwe – A Healthy You" on Power FM, which sought to raise awareness on the essential role of sanitation and hygiene in improving health and creating a cleaner environment for all Zimbabweans.

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PROGRESS ON SANITATION AND DRINKING-WATER 2010 UPDATE

Read this WHO/UNICEF report for the most recent data on drinking-water and sanitation, along with the implications and trends these new data reveal for reaching the basic sanitation and safe drinking-water MDG target.

Click here to access this report.

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RESOURCES AND TOOLS

11. Facilitating "Hands On Training" Workshops for Community-Led Total Sanitation: A Trainers' Training Guide
By Kamal Kar
This guide, produced by Water Supply & Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC) and the Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) Foundation in 2010, was written to fulfil the need for a resource that will support the creation of a strong cadre of trainers for frontline CLTS work. It was written from the author's experiences of facilitating over 100 national, regional, and international ‘hands-on’ training workshops designed specifically for the trainers and users of CLTS in more than 25 countries.

12. WASH-HIV Integration Toolkit: WASH and HIV/AIDS Resources for Planning, Programming and Assessing
This kit, published in 2010, is assembled and organised as set of publications to provide a one-stop resource for anyone seeking guidance on HIV/AIDS-water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) integration. The Hygiene Improvement Project (HIP), a United States Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded initiative led by the Academy for Educational Development (AED) in partnership with The Manoff Group, ARD Inc., and the IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre, has gathered these "best practices, innovative tools and evidenced-based approaches for integrating water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) into HIV/ AIDS programming".

13. Sanitation Marketing for Managers: Guidance for Tools and Program Development
This marketing resource, produced by the Hygiene Improvement Project (HIP) program in Uganda in 2010, guides professionals in the fields of sanitation and marketing to assess the current market for sanitation products and services and to use the results of this assessment to design a multi-pronged marketing strategy. The manual provides guidance for designing and developing a programme tailored to the local demand and supply situation of an initial focus population, but with an eye on scaling up the programme strategy to reach populations with similar sanitation conditions across larger areas.

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Related previous issues of The Soul Beat include:

The Soul Beat 118 - Communication for Hygiene and Sanitation

The Soul Beat 85 - Promoting Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene

Click here to view ALL archived editions of The Soul Beat Newsletter.