Webinar – Female-friendly public and community toilets

WaterAid, UNICEF and WSUP would like to invite you to the upcoming webinar on Female Friendly Public and Community toilets.
Date: Wednesday 3rd April
Time: 10am GMT

Join using this link: https://meet.lync.com/wateraid/andreshueso/CK25SZ4Y. If you have trouble joining, try the Skype Web App https://meet.lync.com/wateraid/andreshueso/CK25SZ4Y?sl=1.

Female-Friendly Public and Community Toilets: a discussion about why we need them and how to design them

Public and community toilets are often dirty, poorly maintained and have not been designed to meet the requirements of women and girls. But Governments and city planners can and should improve this situation by a) including women in the planning process and b) following basic principles of universal design that ensure public and community toilets are accessible for all users, are secure and well located, include context specific menstrual health features, cater for caring responsibilities (of all genders) and are maintained for cleanliness and safety. The practical “Female-friendly public and community toilets” guide is designed to help city authorities, planners and NGOs identify areas that lack public and community toilets and check if existing toilets are female-friendly while also giving some practical guidance for non-negotiable design elements. The webinar will highlight why it is important to look at public and community toilets through a gender lens, giving time for discussion and hoping for feedback from participants.

Presenters:
Priya Nath: Equality, Inclusion and Rights Advisor, WaterAid, UK
Olutayo Bankole Bolawole: East Africa Regional Director, WaterAid, Uganda
Lizette Burgers: Senior Advisor WASH, UNICEF, USA
Sam Drabble: Head of Research and Learning, WSUP, UK

The webinar will be recorded for those that cannot attend.

New guide on female-friendly toilets by WaterAid, WSUP and Unicef

1 in 3 people across the world don’t have a decent toilet of their own. But it’s not just a question of lacking a household toilet – low availability of public and community toilets is also an issue. Where they do exist, these facilities often don’t meet the needs of women and girls, undermining women’s human rights.

The ‘Female-friendly guide‘, out in October 2018 and written by WaterAid, UNICEF and WSUP, is designed primarily for use by local authorities in towns and cities who are in charge of public and community toilets. It’s also useful for national governments, public and private service providers, NGOs, donors and civil society organisations who play a role in delivering these services.

The guide explains why toilets must be female-friendly, before detailing the essential and desirable features needed to make them so. It also suggests ways to increase gender sensitivity in town planning on sanitation.

Recommendations and practical steps have been drawn from existing literature, expert opinion and analysis of pioneering experiences from around the world.

The guide is available to download now, and will also be presented at the UNC Water and Health Conference on 1 November 2018.

Download “Female-friendly public and community toilets: a guide for planners and decision makers”.

This news item was originally published on WaterAid’s WASH Matters website.

Advancing WASH in schools monitoring – new UNICEF publication

Globally, school water and sanitation coverage both increased by six per cent between 2008 and 2013. This is one of the key messages from a new UNICEF working paper “Advancing WASH in schools monitoring“.

The paper presents the best data available for the coverage of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services in primary schools gathered from 149 countries for the period 2008-2013. It also compares current national WASH in Schools (WinS) monitoring indicators against global guidelines.

By providing this information the publication responds to the 2012 Call to Action, Raising Even More Clean Hands. It also aims to promote and support improved monitoring of WinS so that coverage indicators can be included in the forthcoming Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Water, sanitation and hygiene in health care facilities

A new report by the World Health Organization (WHO and Unicef provides an “alarming picture of the state of WASH in health care facilities”.

Drawing on limited data from 54 low- and middle-income countries the report concludes that 38% of the facilities lack access to even rudimentary levels of water, 19% lack sanitation and 35% do not have water and soap for handwashing.

In addition, “training and capacity building to ensure there are sufficient resources and personnel to operate and maintain WASH facilities and enable health care staff to deliver hygiene behaviour change messages is urgently needed”, the report says.

“While the situation appears bleak, there are a number of global initiatives for which WASH in health care facilities is a foundational element and examples of national governments taking the initiative to improve standards, implementation and monitoring”, the report concludes. Through coordinated, global action, with leadership from the health sector, WHO and Unicef believe that all health care facilities can have adequate WASH services.

Besides the full report, you can also download:

• 10 key findings
• Q&A on WASH in health care facilities 
• Simple solution improves water and sanitation in Zambian health-care facilities

Cronk, R. & Bartram, J., 2015. Water, sanitation and hygiene in health care facilities : status in low and middle income countries and way forward, Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization (WHO) and Unicef. x, 38 p. : 8 boxes, 2 fig, 8 tab. Avaialable at:
www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/publications/wash-health-care-facilities/en/

Making a stink: creating social media platforms to end #opendefecation

 

 

The UNICEF India WASH section is hosting a side event at the Stockholm World Water that builds on their poo2loo campign to promote the use of social nedia iniatives aimed at ending open defecation.

Journalist and author of The Big Necessity Rose George will moderate the event. Panel members Include: Stephen Brown (Global Poverty Project and Global Citizen, UK), Sanjay Wijesekera (UNICEF New York), Thorsten Kiefer (WASH United) and Sue Coates and Maria Fernandez (both from UNICEF India).

Make the Stink will be held from 12.30-14.00 on 3 September.

Register for the event

More information at: www.unicef.org/india/reallives_8970.htm

Towards total sanitation workshop report – key findings

How can Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) and other programmatic approaches be  integrated into a service-led rural sanitation delivery? This was the topic that attracted  around 70 practitioners from 16 different countries  to Cotonu, Benin in November 2013 for a Learning and Exchange workshop  “Towards sustainable total sanitation”. The workshop was organised  by IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre in partnership with WaterAid, SNV and UNICEF.

The key findings of the workshop a presented in a new report, which is divided into four categories, covering the four conditions to trigger a service:

• strengthening the enabling environment
• demand creation and advocacy to change behaviour
• strengthening the supply chain, and
• appropriate incentives and financial arrangements.

UNICEF – Handwashing Promotion: Monitoring and Evaluation Module

Handwashing Promotion: Monitoring and Evaluation Module, 2013. UNICEF.

• Full text, pdf

Prepared by Jelena Vujcic, MPH and Pavani K. Ram, MD, University at Buffalo. 

This guide will walk you through planning and implementing monitoring and evaluation (M&E) for your handwashing promotion programme. Programmes that promote handwashing are diverse and vary in scope. The content of this module is designed to be adapted to a variety of programmes. In this guide, you will be introduced to:

• The 7 major steps of monitoring and evaluating handwashing promotion.
• Choosing indicators appropriate to the programme’s objectives.
• Collecting the necessary data, and sample questions for indicators relevant to handwashing advocacy, education and behaviour change.
• Health impact measurement and caveats for the inclusion of health impact assessment as part of an M&E plan.

How to Trigger for Handwashing with Soap

How to Trigger for Handwashing with Soap.  Frontiers of CLTS:  Innovations and Insights, Issue 02, January 2014.

• Full text, pdf

Author: Jolly Ann Maulit for UNICEF Malawi 

The Open Defecation Free (ODF) Malawi 2015 Strategy and National Hand Washing Campaign have been contributing to an increased focus on handwashing with soap (HWWS) in Malawi. This is a very positive development!

Some studies estimate that washing hands with soap can reduce diarrhoeal disease rates by up to 50 per cent and respiratory disease rates by up to 25 per cent. This makes handwashing with soap one of the most cost-effective interventions for reducing illness and preventable deaths among children in Malawi. It is therefore quite worthwhile for us to be working together to increase handwashing practices.

Since Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) is our key intervention for sanitation and hygiene promotion in Malawi, it provides an excellent opportunity to facilitate handwashing behaviour change. However, up till now, the ‘triggering tools’ for achieving HWWS behaviour change from CLTS have not been well known by implementers in Malawi. The purpose of this document is to outline several practical tools which can be used as a part of CLTS in order to trigger realisation among communities of the importance of handwashing with soap, as well as eliminating open defecation.

 

 

 

Cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar UNICEF ambassador for hygiene & sanitation in South Asia

Recently-retired Indian cricket legend SachinTendulkar has become UNICEF Ambassador for South Asia to promote hygiene and sanitation in the region over the next two years.

“I was disheartened to know was that 1600 children die everyday because of diarrhoeal infected diseases”, Tendulkar said at a press conference on 28 November in Mumbai. “I just want to help UNICEF to make more people aware of this initiative that I am part of. It is as simple as washing your hands with soap”.

A video compilation highlights Tendulkar’s involvement in UNICEF campaigns over the past ten years on issues including polio, HIV/AIDS and handwashing.

Source: UNICEF, 28 Nov 2013 ; Times of India, 28 Nov 2013

Extended call for abstracts: West Africa Workshop “Towards sustainable total sanitation”:

West Africa Learning and Exchange Workshop “Towards sustainable total sanitation”

Cotonou, Benin, 12-14 November 2013

Organised by: IRC, UNICEF, WaterAid and SNV

This workshop targets sanitation practitioners that have hands-on experience with the implementation of Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) programmes and projects and aims to bring together professionals working on rural sanitation in West Africa, particularly practitioners, researchers, policy makers, and people from government agencies, donors and media.

It will emphasise the role of CLTS, with a geographical focus on West Africa; the roles of hygiene/sanitation behaviour change and the enabling environment around CLTS and other sanitation improvement approaches.

The workshop will build on the sanitation life cycle framework as developed by IRC and also reflect on methodological experience from IRC’s past learning and sharing exchanges and workshops in the field of Sanitation & Hygiene.

The participation fee is free although participants must take care of their own travel and accommodation costs.

Abstract deadline extended to: 27 September 2013

Abstract form can be downloaded here

More information at: www.irc.nl/page/79226

Read the First Announcement and Call for Abstracts