School Health and Hygiene for Mayan Children

For many children in rural Guatemala, missing school because of a diarrheal disease is an all too common but harsh reality. Our Water and Sanitation Hygiene (WASH) in Schools Project aims to eliminate this reality by improving bathrooms and working with communities to promote good hygiene habits. Our WASH team is partnering with the Aguas Escondidas Community to improve and expand their bathrooms and instill our WASH trainings. The biggest school we’ve ever worked with, Aguas Escondidas has only three bathrooms for more than 2,000 children. The facilities aren’t in the best shape either. They are cramped and sometimes don’t flush.

There’s more to implementing our WASH in Schools Project than just building and renovating bathroom infrastructure, though. We work with and train the school director, teachers, school children and parents on the importance of practicing proper bathroom hygiene and demonstrate how to take care of their facilities.

Projects like WASH are vital for schoolchildren and their families. Globally, diarrhoeal disease is the second leading cause of death in children under five years of age. By investing in school hygiene, we are investing in the health of students and in future generations.  We are excited to add another school to our list of beneficiaries and to work alongside their faculty and community to promote healthy life-long habits. We especially want to Thank You for your Global Giving support--without it, WASH wouldn't be possible.

The students at Patzilin Abaj Primary School sang, danced and celbrated because for the first time in 15 years, when they pushed the lever on the toilet or twisted the faucer, water splashed out. 

Patzilin Abaj Primary School is the ninth school to implement our Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) in Schools Project. Before this, each student had to carry water from their house to fill up a communal barrel, which was used to flush and wash their hands. Towards the end of the week, when the water supply dropped, flushing and washing hands was limited to only the taller students, who could reach the bottom of the barrel. This method of (sometimes) flushing and washing from the giant barrel of standing water put the students at high risk of getting diarrheal illnesses and as a result, missing school.

Implementing our WASH in Schools Project is a lot more than just building and renovating bathroom infrastructure. To create sustainable change, we work with and train the school director, teachers and students and parents on the importance of practicing proper bathroom hygiene and how to take care of the facilities. One of the trainings includes working with teachers to brainstorm ideas on how to incorporate sanitation and hygiene into their curriculum and using the facilities to encourage leadership and responsibility from the students. For example, talking about germs in science class and assigning students to be WASH Ambassadors and monitor that their classmates are washing their hands and that the soap dispenser is not empty.

The new bathrooms and WASH Project implementation were celebrated at a school wide inagruation filled with performances and gratitude. We would like to exted that gratitude to you. Your Global Giving support makes it possible for us to expand sanitation and hygiene to rural schools in Guatemala. Thank You!