Our COVID-19 project around water and hygiene
In cooperation with Making More Health (an initiative by Boehringer Ingelheim) Friends of Chepel e.V. will start a water, sanitation and hygiene project in Chepel called WASH in autumn this year.
WASH is a well known and worldwide introduced WHO concept (https://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/en/) which has been successfully launched in Nepal more than 250 times. It is also supported by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology in Nepal und UNICEF.
For Chepel the project will cover the following aspects:
- Provide the school and the population with safe drinking water, improved sanitation facilities and hygiene education that encourages the development of health behavior
- Safe drinking water will be produced via a manual ultra-filter (UF) filtration system, which is the most appropriate system for a remote rural community such as Chepel
- Training concepts around handwashing and personal hygiene incl. menstrual hygiene, as well as the preparation of safe food
Training will be provided via a sustainable „train the trainer“ concept with „focus teachers“ from Chepel. A so-called „7 flags approach“ will involve the student community with 7 teams who are in charge to follow up with the educational measures and present the current status via a colourful flag.
The whole project will give access to safe drinking-water to 250 students and 500 inhabitants of Chepel. Especially with the COVID 19 pandemic it is of highest importance, that infection prevention and control measures in schools becomes an even more pressing issue. Luckily there have not been any COVID-19 cases in Chepel so far.
Technical implementation will be granted by the well established Nepalese partner-organisation „Splash Nepal“ (Prabhav Nepal) in close collaboration with our very experienced project manager in Chepel – Karma Sherpa – who is also the Principle of the school in Chepel.
The WASH project is the fifth step in our overall water improvement strategy:
- 2013: Ice-free water pipes to all households in Chepel (> 100 households)
- 2015: Re-establishment of water infrastructure after the earthquake in Khumlu (40 households)
- 2017: 500 l water tank per household in Chepel
- 2018/19: 10.000 l underground water tanks for water supply throughout the year (also during winter)
- 2020: WASH project