Handwashing & Health for 2000 Children in Nigeria

For the 4th phase of this project, the Strategy and innovation for development initiative (SI4DEV) partners in Kaduna State utilized Visual aids, Poems and Rhymes to teach and create hand washing awareness in 5 schools in Igabi Local Government. It is aimed at supporting children's school attendance and promoting hygiene and health education in elementary schools in Kaduna.

TEACHING HAND WASHING PRACTICE
Partners led this sessions; they started off the sessions across schools by outlining the hand washing procedure and went further to demonstrate the procedure with the aim of teaching the kids proper hand washing methods with the use of a liquid hand wash and running water. Afterwards, two kids from each school where selected to repeat same process to ensure the session was learnt.

PRESENTATION OF TEACHING AIDS AND HAND WASHING MATERIALS
The presentation of teaching aids and hand washing items on behalf of SI4DEV to various Head Teachers of the schools in the Local Government. The items include 20 SI4DEV BRANDED CARTON OF HANDWASH, 5 BOWLS, and 5 DRUMS FITTED WITH TAPS.

PROJECT SUSTANABILITY TEAM
A Project Sustainability Team (PST) was created in the schools. It’s made up of 2 teachers in each of the schools. They were saddled with the responsibility of carrying out a Hand washing workshop in the school at least once a month for 6 months and to be supervised by a Sustainability Supervisor to ensure accountability.

NAMES OF SCHOOLS VISITED:

1. BRAVE HEART INT’L SCHOOL
2. VISION INT’L SCHOOL
3. NOBEL INT’L SCHOOL
4. MIKA’IL INT’L NURSERY AND PRIMARY SCHOOL
5. THINKERS CHILDREN FOUNDATION

Estimated Number of Students and Teachers Impacted
377 Students
23 Teachers.

Challenges:
Various challenges were encountered as each school comes with its own peculiarity.

Recommendation:
Funds should be made available to enable the sustainability supervisors make visit twice a month to various schools instead of the schedule once a month visit.

Dear donors,

It is always a pleasure to write to you. And it is with your support that we have continued to implement this handwashing and hygiene education project for children in primary schools.

So far, since beginning in February 2019, the Kaduna team have covered 3 local government areas (Chikun, Zaria and Kaduna North), and impacted over 1200 children and 55 teachers (30 of these teachers have been enrolled as sustainability partners). 

General Updates:

There was a delay in executing in the third LGA due to the elections in Nigeria and some attendant post-election violence in Kaduna State. Also, due to increased kidnapping incidents in the area, Kajuru LGA will be replaced with Igabi LGA considering the present security situation in that location. The Scout and Logistics Manager consideration before selecting Igabi LGA such as the current peaceful environment and safety of the Volunteers and partners. The cost of running the project in Igabi will be the same as Kajuru.

Key Lessons Learnt:

• While facilitating the hygiene education session we realized that some pupils could understand all that is been done especially using the poem to learn the procedures.
• Compare to the Zaria LGA where the project was first executed, the learning and assimilation level of pupils in Chikun and Kaduna North LGA is totally different and positive making our work very easy.
• During the Session we observed that the Pupils were quite intelligent and basically took down notes of our activities, Particularly Jegila Ibrahim a pupil in Primary 2, we were amazed by seeing the details of what she wrote down in a short period of time.

Challenges:

• It was quite difficult locating some of the schools due to remote locations however we eventually did.
• In Ahmadu Bello Stadium LGEA Primary School, it was quite difficult teaching the kids with English Lnaguage as many of them understands only Hausa.
• Most schools didn’t have a school hall hence we had to use the school compound or a larger class room for the program.
• One of the Schools in our schedule for the project execution turned us down and we had to replace it with Solid Base International schools to help maintain the 5 slots per LGA.

Recommendation:

1. The Implementation team should subsequently plan to have two hand washing session in schools were there are no halls this is aimed at enabling pupils participate actively during the hand washing demonstration.
2. The Implementation team should have someone who interpret in the language the kids understands during the hand washing demonstration/procedure in Ahmadu Bello Stadium LGEA Primary School.

 Quotes from Students/Teachers:

"We are glad you brought this to our school for this little ones to learn the importance of Hand washing. God bless you all." Sim Ngam, Teacher

‘Thank you for coming to our school to teach us the Hand washing procedure” Mohammed Saleh (Primary One)

“We loved the poem on Hand washing kindly teach us more poems” Adulraham Adulwaheed (Primary Two)