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| Washing Hand with Running Water! Yay! |
I am facilitating an on-going hygiene and
disease prevention knowledge exchange within my village. In June of 2012 I
brought two of my community work partners to training designed and delivered by
the Peace Corps health sector volunteers and staff. There, I and my work
partners learned about assessing the level of hygiene people in our village
were engaging in as related to latrine use and maintenance. We created an
action plan to educate and promote the practice of hand washing with soap after
bathroom use, before eating, after working with animals, etc. Our action plan
goals also included the promotion of safe and hygienic latrine use and
maintenance. We hope to encourage people in the village to truly understand the
importance of latrine maintenance to public health.
WASH Training of Commtunity Health Relais
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| Discussing Latrine Maintenence with my Village |
To supplements the education aspect of this project I have liased between a government latrine construction program PEPAM and my village. I raised the funds for this through the Appropriate Project inititative of the NGO Water Charity. 14 quality, double pit, cement lined latrines were constructed in my village in the month of June. There is now a hygienic, well protected, latrine for approximately every 15 people in the village. The latrines came equipped with hand-washing stations as well. Community education efforts will continue as well.
Here is my host brother Baye Niasse Cisse showing off his new latrine!
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| Hand-washing station on the new latrines |
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| New Latrine Facilities |
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| New Latrine Facilities |
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| New Latrine Facilities with Double Pit Cap in View |
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| New Latrine Full View |
View the project completion page through Water Charity
here.
Community Outreach
One March 31st Kaffrine region PCVs and myself will hosted a
community booth at a local market featuring handwashing and hygiene to prevent disease.
On April 2, 2013 I hosted a handwashing booth at the Nioro Region Health fair and teamed up with a women's group that makes their own soap.
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| Talking to a Group of Kids About Hand-washing at the Nioro Health Fair |
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| Soap Makers Next to my Hand-washing booth. The perfect team! |
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| Sweet Hand-washing Booth! |
Hey, thanks for your comment! It was reassuring to know that there are a lot of other left-handed volunteers that have to adjust too. It will be a clumsy process for me, but exciting. I'll be a health volunteer- so I loved your blog above! It's so neat that you can work both on environmental and health! Thanks for your email- I know I will have questions pop up along the way. Any books you suggest reading before I depart? I know there is a PCV Guide that a PCV wrote... Hope all is well!
ReplyDeleteI loved reading this piece! Well written!
ReplyDeleteMerlen Hogg
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