This project aims at providing adequate toilet facilities and clean, potable water to the 1000 pupils who attend Abiola Nursery and Primary School, a low-income school in Mushin (a slum) in Lagos State, and in the process save lives, improve child health, ensure greater dignity, privacy, and personal safety, particularly for girls. We hope to build a toilet facility comprising 5 well-equipped toilet stalls and also install a borehole that will enable pupils get easy access to clean water.
Pupils attending low-income schools in Nigeria are faced with challenges of learning through a lack of facilities. This discourages enrolment, reducing learning in schools. Most of these schools are dilapidated and in a state of total disrepair. They have no toilets or use pit latrines. A single latrine is provided for over 500 pupils. These latrines with broken doors are left uncared for and smelly due to lack of water. This has caused untold suffering and embarrassment to girls particularly.
Ensuring ready access to hygienic toilets that offer privacy to users will beneficially impact children's health. By providing Abiodun Nursery/Primary School with good toilets and clean drinking water, we will be saving 1000 children from deadly diseases including diarrhea and intestinal parasites such as roundworm and hookworm. We will also be encouraging more pupils particularly girls from low-income families to attend school, get a brighter future and, escape a life of misery and poverty.
UNICEF disclosed that over 50 million Nigerians do not have access to toilets hence resort to open defecation. This project will positively impact the entire community of Mushin and even neighboring communities. Nigeria loses over 150,000 children under age 5 to diarrhea annually. Through a health and hygiene education campaign, we will enlighten and train teachers and community leaders on the need for proper hygiene and sanitation. This will lead to sustainable community growth and development.
