Girls education
Towards effective programming for WASH in schools: a manual on scaling up programmes for water, sanitation and hygiene in schools
What should be done to ensure adequate sanitation and hygiene in schools?
Authors:
; IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre
Publisher:
IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre, 2007
To be successful, water, sanitation and hygiene education (WASH) programmes in schools should focus on providing both effective facilities and effective education. Some of the problems schools face in sustaining a WASH programme relate to the rapid run-down of facilities, having an irrelevant curriculum, poor organisation of operation and maintenance and lack of interest from the school community. This manual describes how to scale up school WASH programmes while ensuring quality and sustainability.
The manual suggests criteria for successful and sustainable WASH programmes at district/regional level, school level, with regards to ensuring adequate facilities and life skills-based hygiene education.
Key issues include:
- ensuring participation at all levels including teachers, parents, local health staff, and local government, and developing a sense of ownership over the WASH programme(s)
- gaining interest and commitment from key decision-makers
- thinking of and involving children: ensuring facilities and processes are child-friendly while ensuring children are not vulnerable to exploitation (e.g. when it comes to cleaning facilities)
- ensuring that operation and maintenance costs is planned for and budgeted for
- planning to limit the number of goals and objectives so that these remain realistic and do not backfire e.g. if facilities fall into disrepair they can become centres of infection
- ensuring good quality training in life-skills for teachers, parents, and children. This type of education requires a different style of teaching aimed at changing behaviours
