Who are the target audiences for hygiene promotion?

Updated - Monday 28 November 2005

The community is made up of many different groups. For maximum efficiency and impact, audiences and unsafe practices have to be carefully targeted. Each group may need to be addressed separately, e.g. house-to-house visits to reach mothers and other carers of small children such as older brothers and sisters or grandparents. Street theatres and focus group meetings may be a good way to reach fathers, and public meetings with a video show and discussions will perhaps suit opinion leaders. It is also important to ensure support for the programme from authorities and collaborating agencies; they may also be an audience to target.

Target audiences - or who the project needs to contact

Primary target audiences are those people who are carrying out the risk practices, e.g. mothers handling baby's faeces; adult men; male adolescents, who may use latrines less than women and girls.

Secondary target audiences are those who influence the primary audience and who are in their immediate society, e.g. fathers, mothers-in-law. In drought-prone areas, fathers and mothers-in-law tend to criticize wives and daughters (in law) when they use more water for hygiene; so changing the attitudes of these secondary target groups needs to be included in the hygiene promotion strategy.

There is a third target audience which is very important: people who lead and shape opinion, e.g. schoolteachers, religious leaders, political leaders, traditional leaders, and elders. These people have a major influence on the credibility and hence on the success or failure of the programme.

Source: LSHTM/WEDC (1998). Guidance Manual on Water Supply and Sanitation Programmes. Published by WEDC for DFID

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