In 2011, USAID/Zambia invested $18 million in a four-year WASH in Schools program that covered half the districts of Eastern Province and provided enough resources to meet the sanitation facility, water points, and hygiene education needs of the school population of those districts. These numbered 200,000 students attending more than 400 primary schools. SPLASH (Schools Promoting Learning Achievement through Sanitation and Hygiene) was implemented from 2012-2015. The USAID funded WASHplus project, managed by FHI 360, implemented SPLASH in partnership with CARE.
Under the SPLASH project, area water pump menders received technical and business training during a four day workshop. Trainees put their new knowledge and skills into practice by repairing broken water hand pumps.
A large component of SPLASH’s (Schools Promoting Learning Achievement through Sanitation and Hygiene’s) sustainability plan for infrastructure is to train a cadre of area pump menders (APMs) to rehabilitate, maintain, and repair the water points installed at schools and provide them with the tools they need to conduct the regular maintenance. Training has taken place in all four districts, with a total of 190 APMs trained and certified. Of these, 40 are women. During the five-day training program, APMs learn the intricacies of hand pump repair as well as business skills to enable them to become self-sufficient WASH service providers. SPLASH developed Operations & Maintenance Guidelines, which have been distributed to each school in all four districts, with an orientation session during distribution. The guidelines encourage the schools to engage local APMs to perform regular maintenance, and they include a space to record the contact information for the closest APMs for each school. The program involves mentoring where more experienced APMs helped mentor and supervise the trainees, who are being prepared to go out on their own.
WASHplus Blog 