tippy tap

On Global Handwashing Day and every day we dedicate ourselves to increasing awareness and understanding about the importance of handwashing with soap to prevent diseases and save lives. Please see below handwashing resources developed by WASHplus on: the small doable approach to handwashing; how to make tippy taps for handwashing; making a habit of handwashing; and integrating WASH into nutrition and HIV programs.

HANDWASHING RESOURCES

Small Doable Actions: A Feasible Approach to Behavior Change, Learning Brief, 2015. This brief takes a look at how WASHplus has applied the Small Doable Action approach to handwashing, water treatment, improved sanitation, menstrual hygiene management, and food hygiene.

Handwashing and the Science of Habit, Webinar, 2014. This webinar emphasizes ways to apply the basic science of habit and behavior change to real world health interventions and program delivery, with a focus on behavior change for handwashing with soap.

Integrating Safe Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene into HIV Programmes: A Training and Resource Pack for Uganda, 2014. This training manual teaches the four key WASH practices: safely transporting, treating, storing, and serving drinking water; safe handling and disposal of feces; safe handling and disposal of menstrual blood; and handwashing with soap (or ash) and water.

Integrating Safe Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene into Infant and Child Nutrition Programmes: A Training and Resource Pack for Uganda, 2014. This resource pack can aid health workers in helping household and community members to overcome, or change, the many daily obstacles to improved water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) practices in the home.

How to Make Other Types of Tippy Taps, 2014. This pamphlet shows how to make Tippy Taps for handwashing from mineral water bottles, tin cans, and hollow tubes. The tippy tap is a hands free way to wash your hands and is especially appropriate for areas where there is no running water.

WASHplus’s peri-urban hygiene improvement project in Benin, being implemented by partner ABMS/PSI, encourages households to build their own tippy taps to facilitate handwashing. Outreach workers noted that tippy taps were disappearing shortly after installation. An inquiry revealed that children were appropriating the tippy taps to use as toys, for lack of better options. In a recent quarterly progress review meeting in two target neighborhoods, outreach workers consulted community leaders and household representatives to come up with solutions. As a result, the group decided to adopt more permanent handwashing stations using 25-liter jerry cans, and install them in the public toilets open to everyone, but which had lacked handwashing facilities.

In another development, in the spirit of “WASH Partout” (WASH Everywhere), the Benin program has branched out from promoting handwashing and water treatment at household level to promotion at the local schools. During a hands-on training, teachers learned how to make different models of tippy taps and incorporate handwashing into their hygiene lessons at school. The schools and staff from implementing partner ABMS/PSI seized the opportunity to formulate criteria and a point system to certify schools as WASH-Friendly.