Rural Mozambican Schools Practice Sanitation

The project is based in the rural area in the Northern Mozambique in the Monapo District that has a population of 305.000 people. The water coverage in 2007 was 24,6% mostly concentrated in the district town Monapo.
The families in the project area face large problems with regard to water and sanitation and diseases, more than 80% of people experiencing severe problems with regard to basic diseases such as diarrhoea even colera, cough, malaria and other diseases.
There are no latrines or access to water at the schools and the children have no habit of bringing water from home, this can make the hours in school quite long and cause lack of concentration.

Current status

Manual construction of wells or drilling of boreholes mounted with a rope-pumps was introduced in the project-area in 2006. Also training of local water-technicians is on-going.
Most schools and even villages are placed at the higher points, where the water-level often is above 40 meters deep, that makes it difficult to use this technology at these particular places. The collection of rain-water is therefore appropriate to explore.
The project already cooperate with a number of pre-schools, and 3 places have benefitted from the construction of water-tanks mounted with a rope-pump.
Management from several small village schools have requested for a support to establish similar systems and are well apted to teach the children about hygiene and sanitation.
The experience is that cultural performances with educational messages are very popular and in particular the actors - here the children - are exposed to a very intensive capacity-building during the elaboration of the message.

The hand-washing system called Tippy Tap is a simple device made by a 5 l container giving water as if it is running for hand washing with
running water.
A competition will be made at the school, where the children will made drawings and exhibit their visions for their homes having good health and sanitation facilities. The best designers from each class will receive a incentive.

The goal is to lower the risk of water-born diseases among 1.500 children attending school/preschool in the rural Northern Mozambique and to spread information. They will become promotors of good hyginic practices, via cultural performances explain about the importance and encouraging the community to seek for available solution to improve household water and sanitation facilities.
In the process 12 local people will be trained in the construction and maintenance of local sanitation facilities.

Goals

• 6 water tanks with rope-pumps for the 3 schools and 3 pre-sc
• 18 VIP latrines and 30 tippy-taps for hand-washing
• 15 water containters with filters (30 liters)
• 1.500 children use hygienic facilities during school hours a
• 12 local "brick-layers" trained

The rope pump is produced in the area and is made with locally available materials. This also makes it easier to secure the maintanance.
The filters and water containers will need frequent cleaning and these tasks will be done by a teachers and a rotating group of children, who will learn at the same time.
The schools will form a sanitation comittee consisting of teachers, parents and representatives of the pupils (even if the are quite young), they will inspect the facilities and secure the maintanance and act if something is going wrong. ADPP the implementing organisation have a long time commitment in the area and a system of regular meetings with community leaders and will also keep being updating for.
The construction of other tanks or wells can be made by local trained water-tecnicians.
The culture group at the schools/pre-school with their teachers will be trained by professionals and will learn to structure the way educational messages can be put forward. In particular the pre-school teachers being from the village are much involved in general community development and they are expected to be able to continue involving the children and youngsters in transmitting message via plays, dancing and singing.