Water for people promotes hygiene in Machinga schools

Machinga District Chief Education Officer, Douglas Namikungulu has commended Water for People for improving water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) situations in some schools in the district.

The Four schools that participated in the school WASH competition are Mlomba, Kalambo, Matope and Zumulu from Nsanama Education Zone.

Namikungulu was speaking on Thursday during a school WASH competition at Nsanama Teachers Development Centre where four schools showcased different interventions aimed at improving hygiene at school level.

He said efforts Water for People were doing to improve school hygiene is very good, saying it has a direct impact on school performance.

“School health cannot be overlooked if we want school to be meaningful especially now that we have Covid-19. It is very important for schools to have access to water and soap,” Chief Education Officer said.

Namikungulu added that, “Water for People was just doing what was needed in schools. The organisation has rehabilitated boreholes and schools are making soap on their own.”

He said apart from making soap schools need to be innovative to produce surplus for sale to communities.

“Money generated from soap sales will help the school to buy other WASH related needs thereby ensuring sustainability of the programme,” the Officer said.

Namikungulu expressed happiness that schools are into waste management and manure making.

He said the level of commitment from school management committees, noting that all schools were willing to benefit from the project, pledging to scale up WASH initiatives to all schools in the next academic year.

“We will put these activities in our education plan so that all schools should benefit and we will put a monitoring mechanism to make sure each and every school is implementing the WASH school plan effectively,” Namikungulu said.

Water for People Project Officer, Brain Mulenga said through game-based school hygiene promotion, the organisation was empowering learners to take up leadership roles in school hygiene promotion.

He said with support from United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) and Water for People has built capacity of learners in 43 schools in Machinga and Chikwawa.

“Through School WASH competition, we are giving an opportunity to teachers and learners to showcase skills acquired from the project and in so doing we are sharing information to schools,” Mulenga said.

Mlomba Primary School emerged the winner after scoring 114 points against Kalambo 94, Matope 90 and Zumulu 81 points.

Head Teacher for Mlomba Primary School, Dennis Kaunde said schools have learnt to make soap using locally available materials.

“We are happy that we have won this competition and it has actually motivated us to do more,” he added.

Participating Schools competed in areas of soap quality, impact of the initiative to school, availability of soap in school for hand washing and ability to explain the soap making processes.