Northern Senegal WASH Tour – Senegal

This project is made possible through the partnership of WATER CHARITY and the NATIONAL PEACE CORPS ASSOCIATION. 

Location
Spanning communities within the St. Louis, Matam, and the Louga regions of northern Senegal.  The villages in question are:  Dahra, Afe, Kallasane, Agnam Tongel, and Ranerou.

Community Description
The 5 sites chosen for the tour vary in language, culture, geographies, and demographics. They all share a need for increased hygiene, though, and a resident Peace Corps Volunteer is willing to make the effort.

Problem Addressed
In the region of Northern Senegal, most people acknowledge that sanitation is a “good practice,” but still many lack the knowledge of how to properly prevent sickness. There are high incidences of entirely preventable pathogen-caused diarrhea etc.

Project Description
Peace Corps Senegal is ready to implement the first-ever “sanitation tour” of northern Senegal. The goal is to visit five different sites to demonstrate how to build a Tippy Tap hand-washing station, how to make and market soap, how to prevent and treat diarrhea, along with behavior change discussions and family finances in relation to disease prevention. After doing numerous small trainings in these communities and seeing the positive response, it was clear that these topics needed more attention throughout the northern region.

The 5 villages chosen for this WASH Tour, their regions, and the local PCV working with the tour are as follows:

A baseline survey for hosting volunteers to complete before the training in order to properly monitor results will be distributed.  For evaluation, a comprehension assessment for immediately after the trainings and a follow-up survey to be completed one month after that are being formulated.

The entire tour is based on the hope that we will be building capacity within each community. We will be teaching specific technical skills such as building Tippy Taps, making soap, and basic marketing techniques, as well as improving knowledge on “germ theory,” diarrhea prevention and treatment options,and the financial benefits of sanitation. While the trainings will be facilitated by Peace Corps volunteers, we also hope to work with the community leaders in order to ensure that the information is understood, both linguistically and culturally. This will not only help the Peace Corps facilitators with local language and cultural nuances but also empower these leaders within their specific group and the entire community.

The total cost has been calculated at 288,150.00 CFA (or $499.74 USD). This will include all the materials needed to build one Tippy Tap hand-washing station and make one batch of soap in each site, as well as lunch (complete with Senegalese tea!) and certificates for each participant.

For more information on the Tippy Tap hand-washing station, visit www.tippytap.org.

Project Impact
About 100 people will be directly involved. However, upwards to 895 will be indirectly affected as the women go on to teach their children and families what they learned.

Peace Corps Volunteer Directing Project
Melissa Hallisey (Dieynaba Ba)

Monitoring and Maintenance
Tools to survey the groups one month after completion to assess knowledge retained and practices adopted have been adopted, and each host PCV will work with their local women’s group to see that the information is adopted.

Comments

Dollar Amount of Project

$550

Donations Collected to Date

$550

Dollar Amount Needed

$0 – This project has been fully funded through the generosity of the Sullivan Family, of Palos Verdes, CA, USA.