“Awareness on good hygiene and sanitation behaviour in the community is just as important as constructing water and sanitation facilities,” says Wattie Wando, World Vision Project Manager, Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Project in Morobe.
Wando said this during a recent Healthy Island Concept training in Mampim Village in Markham District of Morobe Province. About 90 villagers attended the three-day training including four teachers from the local elementary school.
“The WASH project has two components which are equally important. The hardware component is the actual construction of facilities such as toilets, water taps and buildings while the software component refers to trainings like the Healthy Island Concept training, the Water Safety Plan Training, and hygiene and sanitation awareness activities which includes the celebration of the Global hand Washing Day,” said Wando.
Wando also emphasised the importance of community participation, involvement, and ownership and challenged participants saying, “It would be a waste of time, waste of money, and waste of effort, if we set up water facilities in Mampim community and still have high diarrhoea cases from Mampim Community reported in Mutzing Health Centre.”
The World Vision’s WASH project team is using the Healthy Island Concept as a vehicle for a clean and sustainable village/community. The ultimate goal is to get the communities to adopt safe and hygienic living practices and eventually obtain a Healthy Island community status.
Participants were from Mampim community as well as those from the neighbouring Urai community. The villagers turned up at the training in good numbers as they were very interested in learning new ideas presented during the training. The WASH team used the day sessions to run the training following their training guideline, and then used the night sessions to deliver supplementary information on hygiene and economic development. An overview of the Savings Group presented during the night sessions excited the villagers and the villagers mentioned that they would start forming small Savings Groups, get themselves prepared, and then organise for a one week training specifically for Savings Group alone.
The villagers all seemed passionate on putting into practice what have learnt and even requested if the WASH team would return and run trainings on each component of the Healthy Island Concept in detail. During the training the villagers were involved in drawing of the community map, discussion of gender roles and responsibilities, presentations of group works and findings, doing community strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis, and coming up with the community action plan towards obtaining a healthy island status. The community also agreed and came up with a by law to help protect the community members as well as the WASH facilities.
Prior to the Healthy Island Concept Training in Mampim, the project also conducted a community Water Safety Plan training in Dabu Mufins followed by a School Water Safety Plan training in Ngariawang Primary School, all communities in Markham District. The water safety plan training was purposely to help the communities and the schools to assess, analyse and manage the risks associated with their water systems right from the water source to the consumption point. In the training the schools and communities were also led to come up with their own Water Safety Plan of Action.
The WASH Project is funded by the Australian Government.
Pictures:
- Group photo of training participants.
- Andrew Kising, Teacher in Charge of Mampim Elementary School going over the by-laws as agreed by the community as improvements to its affairs.
- Hand washing demonstration led by WASH officer before lunch;
- Group discussions during the training.