Uganda: Project uses sports, school visits to promote health

A new campaign to enhance empowerment of local people to demand and promote sanitation in the eastern and northern districts has been launched. The initiative by Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (Wash)United- Uganda is seeking to increase latrine coverage and empower the local people to demand for easy access to safe water because it is their right. Working in four districts of Kibuku in the east, Gulu and Lira in the north as well as Kampala in the central, the project is aimed at averting diseases resulting from improper disposal of human waste and lack of safe water. “People have been very reluctant and little or no attention was put on hygiene, water and sanitation. People could go to latrines that have no hand washing facilities like a small jerrycan and soap while many others did not know the importance and application of the hygiene facilities,” says Francis Opande, the project coordinator, Kibuku Youth Wash Association said.

He says other people do not have toilets and are using polythene bags in their houses which they throw in the wee hours of the night on the road side, dust bins, bushes while others dump them in the neighbourhood. Opande says the campaign started in primary schools as first priority because most of the schools do not have washing facilities; “But also school children can easily spread the message of hygiene to their homes.”Wash United uses football-based games to educate children about the importance of safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene and facilitate behaviour change.
“World Toilet Cup is a WASH United trademark game that allows both children and adults to approach the touchy issue of sanitation in a fun way. Through the game, participants learn about the crucial importance of sanitation for health, safety, the environment, prosperity and dignity,” says Opande.

“Participants make an effort to tackle the sanitation crisis by kicking as many brown “poo-balls” as possible where they belong – into toilets and latrines. Players who aim particularly well can win a Wash United team shirt.” says Ms Annet Tamale, an activist with Uganda Water and Sanitation NGO Network (Uwasnet), the project coordinators. She argues that washing hands with only water is not good enough because one needs a good scrub with water and soap if they want to get rid of all the germs.

Source: Juliet Kigongo, Daily Monitor, 12 August 2010

Ethiopia, Gondar: JDC bringing wells and wellness to rural residents

 

Ethiopian wells. Photo: JDC

Over the last 25 years, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) has built dozens of potable water wells throughout Gondar and the surrounding countryside with guidance from the Ethiopian Water Works Construction Authority and the local government in Gondar. Funding for this effort has come from international NGOs, as well as private donors and foundations. The Ground Water Development program has produced hand dug wells, protected springs, taps, micro-dams, and latrines.

 

JDC originally built wells in areas that served large numbers of Jews (the Felas Mura population awaiting immigration to Israel) but also supplied water to the non-Jewish villagers. By 2008, as JDC constructed a dozen wells across Gondar through its International Development Program (JDC-IDP), new water projects served 100 percent non-Jewish populations.

[E]ach project engages and is facilitated by local village water committees, who solicit local manpower for some labor and materials used in the construction process. JDC-IDP also provides the villagers with training on the importance of drinking the clean water and encourages behavioral change to improve overall health. Whenever possible, in addition to building the wells, JDC-IDP constructs communal latrines. 

[JDC-IDP] has been repairing and building schools [10 in past 18 months] for some of the poorest Ethiopian children across the Northern Gondar region since 2000. 

Source: JDC, Mar 2009

Mozambique: Water Pumps for Schools

The Mozambican Public Works Ministry and the South African company Roundabout Water Solutions [local partner of PlayPumps International] on Thursday [24 February 2009] signed a memorandum of understanding in Maputo for the installation of 400 playpumps in the same number of Mozambican schools. [...] Each playpump is able to pump 1,400 litres of water an hour.

Zacarias explained that the memorandum follows a successful pilot phase in which 60 playpumps were installed in schools in Maputo and Gaza provinces, benefiting about 40,000 pupils and the surrounding communities. Each pump costs around 15,000 US dollars. The South African company will be in charge of the pumps for 10 years, and during this period local companies will be hired and trained in how to maintain the pumps.

The pumps [...] will benefit around a quarter of a million pupils, as well as the communities surrounding the schools, improving access to safe drinking water and sanitation.

Source:  AIM / allAfrica.com, 26 Feb 2009

Malawi: US pledges 100 water PlayPumps for schools

PlayPump in action. Photo: PlayPump International

The United States will donate 100 water PlayPumps to primary schools in the country from a total of 650 pumps being donated to several African states, the US ambassador to Malawi Peter Bodde said on Thursday, [12 February 2009]. Bodde said this at Chimutu Primary School in Traditional Authority Tsabango’s area in Lilongwe when he presented a PlayPump to the school.

[...] According to Bodde, the 100 PlayPumps will be donated to schools in Malawi with the assistance from the Ministry of Irrigation and Water Development, PlayPumps Water For All, Africare and Water Wells for Africa.

[...] PlayPumps International received a US$ 10 million grant [in 2006] from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to provide 650 water pumps across several African countries. [In 2008] PlayPumps entered into an agreement with Ministry of Irrigation and Water Development to supply 100 pumps in primary schools to be selected by the ministry.

Source: Nation Online, 16 Feb 2009 ; U.S. Embassy Lilongwe, Malawi, 12 Feb 2009

Kenya: sanitary pads reinvented

Every week of the month one or two girls have to stay away from school when they are menstruating.

This means that each girl has to be away from school for three weeks in the 12 weeks that they have to be in school.

The impoverished girls of Budalang’i do not look forward to that time of the month. For them it means being stressed and missing out on school because these girls do not have access to materials that allow them deal with the bleeding.

[...]

Nerima Mugendi, 15, a Standard Eight pupil at Sufugwe Primary School {…] has to miss school for a few days every month because her family cannot afford sanitary towels. She is forced to use wastepaper and rags. She picks the wastepaper from the rubbish pit that is near the school latrines.

[...] Nerima’s mother, who has 16 children to take care of, earns less than Sh100 a day from manual jobs and cannot afford to buy her daughters sanitary towels. A packet costs at least Sh70.

[...]

However, there is a glimmer of hope for the girls in Budalang’i. Dismayed by the situation, a group of 15 women, mainly teachers in the area have started a project to make reusable homemade pads. {…] In the past year, more than 1,000 girls from 11 schools in Budalang’i have benefited from “vichere” [made from cotton cloth and light plastic paper], homemade re-usable and washable sanitary pads.

[...]

However, the re-usable pads have also come with some disadvantages. The paper used is sometimes very hard and causes burns [and] soap to wash soiled vicheres is hard to come by.

[...]

In 2007 ActionAid trained 15 women (mainly teachers) and 55 girls drawn from 11 primary schools in Bundalang’i to make sanitary towels.

The project aims at having all the 34 primary schools in the district involved in making vichere.

Source: Evelyne Ogutu, The Standard, 28 Sep 2008

Lesotho: Water running on empty

Thousands of people in Lesotho who already face chronic food insecurity risk losing access to water, due to the prolonged drought, IRIN, reported on 4 July 2008.

[...].

“According to the Lesotho Department of Rural Water Supplies (DRWS), 30 percent of water points – boreholes, wells and springs – in rural areas have dried up. In both the highlands and the lowlands, thousands now depend solely on limited surface water, where and when it is available.

A 2007 assessment of water and sanitation needs in schools, undertaken by the Ministry of Education and Training, indicated that more than 60 percent of boreholes in the lowland districts had already dried up as the water table dropped.”

DRWS figures indicate that up to 30% of households nationwide now lack access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation facilities, up from 21% in 2006

Water scarcity “is likely to lead to increased incidents of water-borne diseases, such as cholera, diarrhoea and dysentery”, UNICEF Education Specialist, Bernard Batidzirai, said.

[...]

“An internal MoSW survey found that approximately 60 percent of the country’s health centres did not have access to clean, safe water”.

[...]

“In response to the crisis, the UK’s Department for International Development has made available some US$1 million, with which UNICEF has provided 310 hand pumps and rehabilitated 345 more, constructed 40 boreholes and erected 50 water tanks, providing safe drinking water to nearly 200,000 people and 81,000 school children”.

Ironically Lesotho exports large amounts of water to South Africa as part of the controversial Lesotho Highlands Water Project. To tackle the increasing domestic, industrial and institutional water needs in Lesotho, the government has initiated the European Union financed Lesotho Lowlands Water Supply Scheme.

Kenya: Water crisis as dry conditions persist in the north

Serious shortages of water and pasture for livestock are being experienced in the northern Kenyan districts of Isiolo, Mandera and Wajir as dry conditions continue, local leaders said.

“The situation is very bad in Mandera; people are moving across the border to Ethiopia,” Mandera East member of parliament Mohamed Hussein Ali told IRIN.

[...]

Mukhtar Hussein Liban of the Mandera Education Development Programme told IRIN the drought had heightened tensions over resources between different communities in the region. It had also affected schools.

“Many children, especially those in lower primary, have abandoned learning to join their parents in search of pasture and water,” he added. “The health status of children has been affected owing to the lack of milk and the long distance they have to trek to look for water.”

Read more: IRIN, 14 Apr 2008