About World Water Day 2023
World Water Day 2023 (WWD) celebrates water and raises awareness of the 2.2 billion people living without access to safe water. It is about taking action to tackle the global water crisis and achieving Sustainable Development Goal 6: water and sanitation for all by 2030. This year, the focus of the United Nations observance is on accelerating change to solve the water and sanitation crisis. The global campaign, called Be the change, encourages people to act in their own lives to change the way they use, consume and manage water.
WWD campaigns by Tdh in Nigeria
On March 22, 2023, the world celebrates World Water Day. To mark this date, Terre des hommes (Tdh) WASH staff and volunteers will carry out awareness raising campaigns in the Maiduguri Metropolitan Council and Jere Local Government Areas (LGAs). They will comprise the sensitisation of people in their communities through door-to-door outreach, as well as sensibilisation of children in targeted locations, including schools and Temporary Learning Spaces (TLS). Healthcare centres and water fetching points will also be targeted, to educate people on the importance of clean water to human life.
Other messages of the awareness campaign will emphasise the importance of safe drinking water in preventing water-borne diseases such as cholera, typhoid, hepatitis E, and others. Water treatment and procedures, a safe water chain, water hygiene practices, and safe drinking water from collection to use are all required. The campaign’s target audience will use the knowledge gained to improve and promote their well-being.
Looking forward
The Tdh Nigeria team is currently preparing for the baseline data collection, which will evaluate the hand hygiene of school students in the two arms of the study (control and intervention groups) before any intervention takes place. The baseline assessment will comprise handwashing observations, structured questionnaires and hand-rinse sampling, which will take place from May to mid-June 2023.
During the implementation phase, 13 public schools will be selected within the LGAs of Maiduguri and Jere. These schools will receive hardware (2 Gravit’eau handwashing stations per school) and software components (RANAS behaviour change activities), and will be compared against a control group of another 13 schools. The latter will only benefit from the handwashing systems after the end of the intervention. The project will target a group of 50 students per school, who will be selected randomly and fit within the age group of 10-12 years.