Monday, May 13, 2013

Gambia Workshop Continued...


I think the care group volunteers serve the same purpose on a community level in promoting behavior change through advocacy, but the WASH program in the school would be focused more on the work the teachers will do with the children because the care group volunteers may not have access to them everyday and the VADS are done 2 times a week for each village. I hope that the children will then influence their parents to follow their examples in hygiene promotion. In doing these activities, it will foster discussions between the teachers and I on their cultural beliefs that prevent children to wash their hands with soap in the community. Then, this could give us an idea on the activities we need to implement and the messages we need to convey to them to demystify certain cultural myths on handwashing. For more information on socio-cultural beliefs that might hinder people to do desired behaviors in your community, read
Toward Total Sanitation: Socio-cultural barriers and triggers to total sanitation in West Africa at th following link:
This workshop also inspired me to do a baseline survey only on Water and Sanitation, although I have administered a general baseline survey in the village. It covers some questions but I thought it would be neat to only see the Water and Sanitation issues of my community to gain insights on the reasons people do not adopt certain behaviors. During the workshop, I connected with the APCD from Mali who provided an example of the WASH survey they have used throughout the years. The WASH indicators are provided in this blog if people are interested in doing a WASH survey.
 

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