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Hand washing promotional tools

Updated - Thursday 23 August 2007

What are some of the hygiene promotional materials that you believe to be most flexible in terms of adaptation and cross cultural relevance? Are you aware of any demonstrative hand-washing promotional tools?

IRC’s TOP

A good reference is IRC’s Thematic Overview Paper on Hygiene Promotion [1]. Although it does not give a clear cut answer to the above mentioned questions they provide access to the main principles of Hygiene Promotion based on worldwide experiences and views of leading practitioners. It also provides direct links to more detailed explanations and documented experiences of critical aspects of the topic on the world wide web.

PHAST

PHAST (Participatory Hygiene and Sanitation Transformation) is a methodology that helps community workers to promote community hygiene and behaviour change and to improve water and sanitation facilities. It is based upon another participatory methodology called SARAR, which stands for Self-Esteem, Associative Strengths, Resourcefulness, Action-planning, and Responsibility. It helps people to feel more confident about themselves and their ability to take action and make improvements in their communities. Feelings of empowerment and personal growth are as important as the physical changes, such as cleaning up the environment or building latrines. The PHAST Step-by-Step Guide[2] has seven steps. The first five help take the community group through the process of developing a plan to prevent diarrhoeal diseases by improving water supply, hygiene behaviours and sanitation. The sixth and seventh steps involve monitoring and evaluation.

CHAST - Somalia

An innovative hygiene promotion methodology is CHAST (Children’s hygiene and sanitation training). It is piloted in Somalia by Caritas-Switzerland. It is based on the proven premise that personal hygiene practices are usually acquired during childhood – and that it is much easier to change the habits of children than those of adults. A presentation about the programme was held at the School Sanitation and Hygiene Education Symposium, organised by IRC in June 2004 in Delft, The Netherlands. It is not specifically targeted at hand washing, but it might reply to your request for flexibility in terms of adaptation and cross cultural relevance [3].Child Friendly Hygiene and Sanitation Facilities in Schools

Another resource, aimed specifically at children is ‘Child Friendly Facilities’ by Jaap Zomerplaag and Annemarieke Mooijman (2004). This document covers all the stages of a design project, from needs assessment to operation and maintenance, because effective child-friendly hygiene and sanitation facilities cannot be realised merely by improving designs. It stresses the importance of active involvement of children, teachers, parents and the community during all of these stages so that they themselves will be able to find solutions for their own problems and needs [4].

TALC

For pictures, posters, slides and videos on hand washing and hygiene promotion in general, I would also like to refer you to TALC, for teaching aids at low costs [5]. TALC is a charity based in the UK. They regularly produce CD-ROMs with contributions from many different NGOs that work on health and hygiene promotion.

ActionAid – Sierra Leone

One of the major obstacles in promoting hand washing is that bacteria cannot be seen, and contaminated hands might look clean. Children are good actors in sketches that show the hands that look clean can in fact be dirty.

ActionAid-Sierra Leone was successful with a module (one out of the total package of nine modules) for ActionAid’s hygiene promoters, aimed at community members[6].

The International Rescue Committee - Burundi

You may also want to contact the International Rescue Committee in Burundi for two modules (out of the total package of eight modules) on hand washing. These modules were taught by volunteers from refugee communities who were trained to organise hygiene awareness sessions for the refugee communities (in camps). These modules treat hand washing as one of several interventions that can prevent diarrhoea[7].

Notes

  • [6] For more information on the environmental sanitation manual, please contact:
    ActionAid International
    Postnet Suite 248
    Private Bag X31
    Saxonwold 2132
    Johannesburg
    South Africa
    Tel: +27 11 8800008
    Fax: +27 11 8808082
    or: send an e-mail to:
    ActionAid Africa (Zimbabwe)
    [back to the text]

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Date: Aug 2004

This response has been provided by the WELL Resource Centre Network with funding from the UK Department for International Development (DFID).

Would you like more information on the WELL Enquiry Service? Look at the WELL website. You can also send an e-mail to the WELL program at IRC