Back to School
Trip Start
Feb 24, 2007
1
5
14
Trip End
Mar 09, 2007
Lalitpur - Uttar Pradesh,
India
Friday, March 2, 2007
On our arrival Gangora school we were welcomed with flower garlands and holi paint the children sang hygiene songs and were hugely excited by our visit. We were given a tour of the school and its brilliantly simple force hand pump which either pumps to a tap at the pump or to the storage tank on the school roof. This storage tank then supplies the children's urinal block with water. Everything was painted with WaterAid logos and bright, clear hygiene messages. We then played games with the children, Dan and I practised our Hindi numbers (taught by Shipra on the journey), with the children shouting out a different hygiene message for each number, and colours with a simple paper game. Its great to see and be part of so much fun being used to teach the hygiene messages to the children
A future prime minister
. Again we broke into different groups, I sat with the trained hygiene children. These are bright students (aged 10-14) who have been picked to help teach other children and their communities about good hygiene and sanitation practise. They do 20-25 house visits a month in their villages and keep a log book about what they see and who they talk to. One boy described how he emptied the dried cow dung cakes (burnt for fuel) which were being stored in their latrine, so that he could use the latrine. When his mother hit him and told him to put it back, he refused to eat until she listened to the him and the need for a latrine! Another he helped his father build their latrine as an example to the other villagers. It was amazing to see and hear the enthusiasm of these children who all want to grow up and be hygiene educators!
The children then took us on a tour of their houses so we could see the good practise, water being stored at height and kept covered, and their latrines. It was really eye opening to see how the children are driving the changes in their communities and forcing adults to listen to them.
After lunch with the teachers we traveled to our second school, Jainwara school
A lovely house hold latrine
. Here were again given a huge welcome with flowers and paint, before being given the huge honor of opening their new urinal block. Rian cut the ribbon with Dan and Andrea opening the padlocks to the boys/girls sections. The boys then christened the urinal! It felt really humbling to know that this urinal block had been finished 15 days ago, but kept out of use until we arrived and formally opened it. We are just 12 normal people but are being treated like celebrities and receiving praise and thanks for work which has been undertaken by so many people. We watched one boy (a future prime minister I'm sure) give a class on hygiene practise and another girl demonstrate how to wash your hands with soap (or ash), again the confidence and enthusiasm is inspiring.
I discussed the changes with the Parent Teacher Group who had helped build the latrine. The group meets every month and collects money for the improvement of the school. They explained how the children all use household latrines and they had learnt from their children. The school has 100% attendance for enrolled children - a statistic I know most schools in the UK (including my parents') would kill for!
This is a really interesting new project for WaterAid where they are just working in the school (which serves 20 surrounding villages). By working in the school with the children WaterAid can reach a much larger number of people and villages, which is brilliant, and because the communities themselves are leading the changes the work is totally sustainable. More importantly, the approach really works... one of the villages served by the school has become Open Defecation (OD) free just through the work of the trained children
Dan opening the urinal block
!Today I really began to understand just how important the role of hygiene education is within the projects. The government can come and build latrines, but without working with the community to educate them about the need for sanitation and hygiene, they won't be used (for anything other than storing cow dung). The problem is that the software (education) is time intensive and doesn't sound impressive to donors, who want to know how many hand pumps their money has provided! It's easy to monitor progress through building things (hardware, latrines/hand pumps) but without the software (including Shipra's brilliant Har do song) it is likely that they won't be used and will fall into disrepair.
