Gender Equality Vietnam Project #51957

Help 2,000 School Girls Access Clean Sanitation

by Loreto Property Association (Vietnam) Limited

Help 2,000 School Girls Access Clean Sanitation

Project Report | Sep 22, 2022
Final report

By Loreto Vietnam | Education for Change

1. Background

Loreto Vietnam is implementing educational programs in most disadvantaged communities of Vietnam where most residents are farmers, fishermen, day laborers or migrants with low income. 32% of the students are from state registered ‘poor’ or ‘near-poor’ families. 42% of the classrooms are downgraded and have to be closed down on extremely rainy days. Among Loreto Vietnam’s project schools, 47% are lacking basic hygiene facilities with temporary toilet block or even no toilet at all. This challenge is creating more health risks to students and teacher as well as refraining them from attending classes regularly. Without hand-washing practice and lack of safe water, killer diseases including COVID can happen at a wide scale during a short period, if we do not implement urgent intervention programs.

"A toilet is not just a toilet. It is a life-saver, dignity-protector and opportunity-maker. Whoever you are, wherever you are, sanitation is your human right" (United Nations, 2020). Sharing that spirit, Loreto Vietnam understands the importance of clean water, basic toilet, and good hygiene for the survival and development of every human beings, especially children. As an effort to resolve the problem and to raise awareness and improve sanitation standards, Loreto Vietnam seeks to renovate toilet blocks, provide health education program and ensure standard sanitation facilities, safe water, new wash basins and separate areas for girls and boys to promote their safety, privacy and comfort.

To further expand the knowledge of students in hygiene, health and appropriate toilet practices, regular communications and training are conducted. The teachers and students would also join in-class talks and discussions on how to keep the school including toilet areas safe, clean and green, initiate waste management and water save solutions.

2. Key activities

- Needs assessment:

Loreto Vietnam performed various needs assessment meetings with the local authorities, project schools including principals, key teachers and focus-group students on their needs related to school sanitation and health education, their knowledge, skills, and expected outcomes.

- Renovating school sanitation facilities

Under the support of the local authority, 2 new toilet blocks are built and fully equipped, separately for girls and boys, 1 new water storage tank is equipped.

- Capacity building and communications

Loreto Vietnam provided trainings on health knowledge and skills for all the schools. The team also delivered the communications sessions to the students and teachers via two simple and easy videos to learn and practice how to wash hands properly. All the teachers will use 6 steps of handwashing and dance to integrate into all classes within their official curricula.

- Monitoring and supportive supervision

Loreto Vietnam conducted monthly monitoring trips to review the implementation and provide supportive supervision to all the schools. The local partners assigned staff to be responsible for maintaining, and operating the project regularly; planning periodic communication activities, guide students on the use of the facilities, personal hygiene, and school sanitation; setting up daily and weekly cleaning and cleaning schedules.

3. Next steps:

- To sustain the model implementation by continuing providing the trainings on health education, monitoring and supportive supervision and organizing regular review meetings with local partners.

- To explore the opportunities of expanding the model to other districts and provinces based on the lessons learned and achievements of the current model

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Aug 24, 2021
Progress Report on Promoting School Sanitation for School Girls in Vietnam

By Nguyen Viet Dung | Executive Director

Health communications in Ca Mau

Every school girl needs quality education.
And our school girls need clean water and safe sanitation.
Small acts. Big impact. To ensure access to clean water and safe sanitation is the right of every school girl in Vietnam.

Thanks to GlobalGiving and amazing donors and supporters, Loreto Vietnam has been in a right track to bring more school sanitation and health education to school girls in disadvantaged areas of Vietnam.

Since the launch of the project of GlobalGiving in April, Vietnam has faced several new wave of COVID-19 pandemic, which severely affected the school year plan as well as our project implementation timeline. In particular, the situation is getting worse for the last month, in some cities of our project, the rate of community case detection peaked at 77%, so a lot of risks for transmission without knowing the sources. However, with a close partnership between Loreto Vietnam, local authority and schools, we have utilized all the available timing slots when the schools were normally operated to introduce the project activities to teachers and students.

Another challenge to our project is not reaching the goal of $50,000 for more substantial activities. So far, we can reach only 10% of the goal. As a result, we would be incredibly grateful if you could share our project with your friends and family to help us spread the word about our work and continue to grow our community of supporters like you.

1. Initial results

In May, we conducted the monitoring trips and providing training on health knowledge and skills for 1,300 students in Ca Mau province. The local partners assigned staff to be responsible for maintaining, and operating the project regularly; planning periodic communication activities, guide students on the use of the facilities, personal hygiene, and school sanitation; setting up daily and weekly cleaning and cleaning schedules.

Loreto Vietnam and Bureau of Education and Training (BOET), all the primary schools in the regions and representative of parents’ boards organized review meetings on school sanitation and hygiene according to the legal documents of Ministry of Education and Training and Ministry of Health. Loreto Vietnam and BOET head gave an orientation on the two legal documents of Ministry of Education and Training and Ministry of Health on school sanitation and hygiene, 6 standard steps of hand washing as instructed by Ministry of Health.

The team also delivered the communications sessions to the students and teachers via two simple and easy videos to learn and practice:

Hand washing funny dance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWC0HIWKfoE
Hand washing to keep COVID away https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JV9MeSiRxBI

Afterwards, the BOET and school management used two above legal documents for their review and monitoring tasks. All the teachers will use 6 steps of handwashing and dance to integrate into all classes within their official curricula.

At the review workshops chaired by BOET in May, no schools reported any incidence related to poor hygiene and sanitation. The 6 steps of handwashing and related dances were repeated in every Monday morning session.

2. Coming activities:

Continue to raise funding to rebuild and renovate the school sanitation facilities in Mekong River Delta region.
Conduct the painting contest for all the students with the theme of keeping the school and school sanitation clean and beautiful
Deliver further trainings and communications to the students and teachers
Initiate mass media and social media activities to promote all the schools’ results
Measure the project impacts for re-planning, expansion of the model.

"A toilet is not just a toilet. It's a life-saver, dignity-protector and opportunity-maker" (United Nations). Therefore, access to clean water and basic sanitation is the right of every child. However, in remote areas of Vietnam, many children have limited or even no access to clean school sanitation and safe water, making them vulnerable to diseases caused by poor hygiene. Our program aims to promote a standard model of school sanitation and health education in those disadvantaged schools. To fulfil this goal, we do need your support and consider telling your friends and family about our project—you can share this link https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/clean-sanitation-for-school-girls/ on social media, or just bring us up in conversation. Sharing with your community why you chose to support our organization will help us increase the work we can do in our community.

Many thanks and I wish you and your loved ones health, safety and happiness these days. I hope once the pandemic is under control and it is safe for travel, we can bring you on our field trip to visit our wonderful schools to see our joint social impact to support students with safer and cleaner school sanitation for their health and future.

Music performers during health education sessions

We love our schools clean and beautiful

Monitoring and inspection for coming projects

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