My right to live in a clean environment

Shuhd is a nine year old girl living in Al Hota, a district within the southern Lahj governorate in southern Yemen. She has just begun the second grade at Al-Zahra School and will tell you “I want to be a doctor when I grow up so I can be able to help children and I love drawing, especially birds and trees”. Like many other children her age, she typically starts her day by helping her mother with the housework, cooking and looking after her brothers. When she is not in school she enjoys watching television or listening to music.

Shuhd is one of the many children and families who benefitted from Save the Children’s hygiene campaign and awareness sessions. We asked her to tell us a little bit about how she has been involved with Save the Children’s activities and how they have affected her life and her family.

“One day, a man from our neighborhood called Marwan [Marwan is one of the volunteers in the WASH program in Lahj] came to our house and gave us information sheets and tips about hygiene. He also talked to us about overusing water and wasting it and how bad that is because water is a blessing and we must preserve it. Marwan taught us how to keep ourselves clean and take care of our hygiene especially by washing our hands before and after meals, after using the toilet, and after we play. That’s because our hands are always exposed and so they collect lots of germs. He also taught us that any uncovered or exposed food causes sickness and therefore we must cover our food to keep it away from germs and insects.

I participated in the hygiene campaign and we used to always shout out loud the phrase “I’m proud that I wash my hands with soap and water”. They taught us how to work together in cleaning our neighborhood.So I participated with my neighbors in cleaning it and they gave us brooms, shovels, and bags to collect garbage. We learned that accumulated garbage causes diseases and attracts bacteria. Now I teach my brothers at home everything that I learned from the campaign and I make them wash their hands with soap and water to prevent catching diseases.

I am so happy that I participated in this campaign and that I learned so much about hygiene. This is the first time that we all gather to clean our neighborhood.Now the nearby neighborhoods have started to do the same after they saw how successful this activity was for us. It is my right to live in a clean environment”.

Message from Ghada, 35, Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Committee Member “This is the first time for me to contribute in serving my community and feeling that I am making a change. We [the committee members and volunteers] learned how to raise awareness and do some activities with the people in our neighborhoods to encourage them to clean and maintain a healthy and clean environment. The first step we took is that we visited the houses in our neighborhood and introduced them to the campaign and told them what they have to do in cleaning the neighborhood. Then we gave out cleaning equipment and decided on a day for everyone to go out and help each other in cleaning the street and collecting the garbage. We received really good reactions and the campaign became so popular that even the nearby neighborhoods started doing their own cleaning campaigns. And now it has started to become a habit for the people to clean their neighborhood”. Message from Medyan, 50, Committee Head “We used to suffer in our neighborhood and nearby neighborhoods from scarcity of water especially since our governorate, Lahj, is one of the hottest places in Yemen and so people use huge amounts of water for drinking, bathing, and other uses. The organization’s interaction with the people was great; they have done many awareness sessions about the use of water and keeping a healthy environment. They [Save the Children] have installed a water tank in my neighborhood which is great for my people but the only problem is that now people from other neighborhoods have started to come and use water from this tank. I hope that the organization can provide us with a solution to provide larger amounts of water so that it’s enough for everyone”.

Lahj governorate is severely affected by poor water and sanitation, as 29.8 percent of the population do not have access to safe water sources and 61.7% do not have access to improved sanitation, with most areas falling far below Sphere standard measures of water and sanitation access and coverage.

With the support of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), Save the Children is working in two districts (Al-Hota and Tuban) in the Lahj governorate. The Water, Sanitation and Hygiene activities provided support throughout the districts by rehabilitating latrines and communal water points and various hygiene promotion activities (committee training, awareness sessions, cleaning campaigns, etc).

In the last three months, Save the Children was able to achieve the following: rehabilitation of 61 latrines, rehabilitation of 10 communal water points, trained 44 WASH committee members and 11 community workers (volunteers), conducted awareness sessions on key hygiene messages for a total of 425 people. And the Organization also successfully launched two community based hygiene campaigns.

Written by: Hind Al-Eryani and Claire Donohue

Photo by: Saleh Awadh