|
Every house in Ghachowk village in Nepal has a toilet, and the community takes responsibility for keeping the village clean. Local schoolchildren were the first to learn these lessons and did a splendid job of passing them on to adults
Like the rest of South Asia, poor hygiene and lack of sanitation is a major public health concern in Nepal, where only 45% of the population has access to a toilet. Poor sanitation is responsible for around 70% of childhood illnesses, and nearly 10 million cases of diarrhoea occur among children under 5, resulting in approximately 13,000 child deaths every year. However, through a project initiated seven years ago by Unicef in partnership with the government of Nepal and a handful of development organisations, the village of Ghachowk in Kaski district is setting an example that will hopefully inspire the rest of the country. 'Ghachowk is a 100% sanitation zone. Every home in our village has a latrine,' proclaim billboards along the path leading up to the village. This is no empty boast -- indeed all 549 homes here do have a toilet, and there is no open defecation. The boards also warn people of the dangers of communicable diseases. What is remarkable about the Ghachowk Village Development Committee's (GVDC's) sanitation drive is that it was pioneered by local schoolchildren as part of National Sanitation Action Week initiated by Unicef seven years ago. In early May, around the countryside of Kaski district in Nepal, students and teachers of the Shukla Gandaki High School and Meghraj Lower Secondary School led their communities in a sanitation campaign that was part of the eighth National Sanitation Action Week observed across Nepal between May 7 and 13. The annual programme includes School Sanitation and Hygiene Education (SSHE). Activities help to ensure that students are aware that they need to wash their hands with soap after visiting the toilet, and before meals, keep their nails short and their school premises clean. After the young club members and other school students received training from their teachers they began to campaign and educate their parents and neighbours on the benefits of constructing toilets and keeping their surroundings clean. The joint committee of students and adult community members also share responsibility for garbage-collection, sweeping the roads and clearing the neighbourhood of animal waste. But this awareness did not take place overnight. "Earlier, when we went to our neighbours and told them about the benefits of constructing a latrine, they would chase us out as if we had said something offensive," says eighth-grader Madan Pokharel, chairperson of the children's club for Meghraj Lower Secondary School. "But now, everybody takes pride in the fact that there isn't even cowdung or trash on the roads in our village," says the 14-year-old. "The children were ecstatic when we told them what we were planning to do in the village," says Tika Ram Lamsal, headmaster of Meghraj Lower Secondary School and coordinator of the total sanitation campaign for Ghachowk village. "We did all we could, but it was ultimately left to children like Madan who could better convince their parents," he says. Supplementing these National Sanitation Weeks, in 2005 the Water Supply and Sanitation Sub-Divisional Office (WSSDO), with technical and financial support from Unicef, launched the School-Led Total Sanitation (SLTS) project that incorporated the existing SSHE programme. Initially, Unicef and WSSDO trained the teachers and offered to provide them with a toilet plan, 10 feet of pipe for plumbing, as well as technical support to every household to build a toilet. But soon, community members started buying their own material and now most donor agencies discourage direct intervention. The SLTS project also involves adult members of the community such as members of the school management committee, parent-teacher associations and mothers' clubs that are all part of the larger cleanliness committee. The government of Nepal has a target of reaching 100% sanitation by 2017. If communities across the country are able to follow the Ghachowk example, this may not be such a difficult goal to achieve. -- Lisa Batiwalla
(Lisa Batiwalla is a journalist based in Pune) InfoChange News and Features, June 2007
|
