November 2021: Creative Handwashing Campaigns

Hi Emiliy, 

Antenna foundation has made several project regarding handwashing awareness. For example, for the Rano Madio project in Madagascar, we organized a competition of "tippy-tap". The tippy tap is a construction to create your own handwashing with just a few stuffs. It had a great sucess and the students received schools material as a reward. Check it our here and go on our social media for more inputs :-)

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/antenna-technologies_journaezemondialedulavagedesmains-handwashingday-activity-6854317516756406272-51hD

in general, we try to teach the children to wash their hands to prevent them against hydric diseases trough lessons and, as a result, their parents are then instructed : Children are a great vector of information

Pierre-Gilles Duvernay / Head of Schools Unit & Water & Hygiene Unit Technical Advisor

It depends on the nature of people, how many of them are educated, understand the simple principles of hand hygiene. In the humanitarian context, it is essential to demonstrate women, girls boys and men the positive impact for had washing to mitigate the diseases, paying less cost to procure soap bars and practice hand washing with the availability of water and hand washing facilities. Rather than going to medical units and pay more money for medicine and medication to recover their health. Feeling more comfortable and acceptable among their peers. Special attention should be paid to girls and boys, since they are the most vulnerable people and receive it quickly, while more efforts should be applied to the elder people (women and men).

Hi all, 

I really appreciate the use of handwashing behaviour change approach. Although it was not in an emergence context, UP Mozambique has been just like others said, used the tip-tap at the community level, but with the Covid-19, being an emergence, we used expensive means such as tapped buckets with water and soap to fight against the disease. Specially with Covid- «19, quickly people changed their behaviour towards handwashing. They had to choose either death or life. Eventually, the contamination went down. It is though a powerful tool.

Actually choosing the motives will depend on the baseline data collected, in other words motives differ from case to the other based on the situation and context of the emergency

this approach will help me to understand the people from let them fill disgust if they didn't wash their hands after using latrine from video or stories.

Use of motives is key for behaviour change. Usually in humanitarian or development contexts people tend to use the motive of 'fear' as disease outbreaks such as cholera, Ebola and COVID-19 can elicit fear and result in an increase in handwashing behaviours because people are scared they might catch the disease. But once the threat of the disease leaves so does the handwashing practise. Using motives like 'nurture' can have a more lasting effect as people will wash hands to protect their loved ones. At WaterAid we conducted a multi country mid-term rapid assessment to assess our COVID-19 hygiene response and one thing we evaluated is what motivates people to wash their hands, besides fear. We then used the context-specific results to incorporate relevant motives into the handwashing campaign. 

I could use motives to understand the force that drives people's behavior to wash hands or constraints them. Understanding of this will help shape how the program will be designed so that it yields the required results.

Motive tools is one of the key for behavior change. I really happy to use this tools for Hand Washing behaviour change. I could use motives to understand the force that motivates people to wash their hands or constraints them.

I will identify the motives that are best related to the target audiences of our project using the Wash’em motive guide, working with the target audiences. I will then use it to generate recommendations through the Wash’em software. I will then work with my team to develop the program activities, test if what we have developed is working with the target audiences, improving it where necessary. I see great potential in linking to hand washing behavior the desires of mothers of seeing their children’s growth to what they may aspire to. I will also explore how I could use the motive guide in the handwashing in the community program we have in the development context.  

Research shows that fear of disease is not always the strongest motivating factor for handwashing.  This will depend on your context. Defining what motivates people to wash their hands will be key in designing any hygiene promotion project, where and how to target, and the level of intervention required. If you tap into the right motive your project will be more successful.  In a humanitarian context the necessity to survive and look after your children will be strong therefore finding the right motives around this important. 

Motive tools are one of the keys for behavior change but needs to identify the motives for changed behavior based on the context norms. I could use motive that people may be convinced to wash their hands, so that their hand smell nice and gain respect from neighbors, or personal pride. By working with the target groups one can discover their views of the benefit of the safer handwashing practice.

Two motives touch me well.The disguise and the motive to belong. People love to be respected and celebrated. Clean ,well shaven ,tidy persons have confidence and high esteem among the community members and are kind of modelled.People who are dirty and living in a dirty environment let say of Open defaecation are disregarded and people segregate them. Using motives the communities can easy embrace cleanness through handwashing and also safeguard the environment they leave. Motives campaign can accelerate the tidiness of the community and persons living around them.

Motives are paramount in driving people to adopt certain behaviors. As we may be aware that the health belief model which tends to thrive on the premises that people will do certain practices because of fear of disease and as such, awareness creation as used as a primary intervention to drive behavior change. However, it has been evident that awareness or fear of disease is not good enough to promote behaviors.  Upon this , the realization was made that people tend to want to identify with things that appeal to them. On that note, it is paramount to map out the motives in communities towards certain practices, and use  such motives to be the ingredient in promotional materials. For example using "nurture", the desire to raise healthy happy babies to promote hand washing with soap amongst mothers and care givers of children under 2 years.

I work in an emergency context. We are currently piloting Wash'Em in 3 locations. We have already conducted the assessment. And based on recommendations from the assessment after filling in the motives tool, we are in the process of procurement. Unfortunately, due to floods, we are likely to delay the roll-out as communities have moved from their flooded locations to higher ground.

No one knows when the waters will recede and families goes back to their homes

One of the problems we face is we use the term "hygiene promotion" and link hand washing strongly to disease. Understanding YOUR motives for HP and others' motives is useful. By listening to people we can see that we may have a hand washing project that (perhaps) does not mention diarrhoea! When I teach this topic, I get people to look at adverts for soap. Fragrance, beauty, smooth skin, cleanliness are prominent issues. Health is less prominent, except perhaps for adverts aimed at parents, looking after the safety of their children. These commercial companies know how to market their products - we can learn from them !

Use of Motives in a handwashing behaviour change campaign can be very useful. In a school context, pupils are keen on the behaviours and practices of their friends in school. If they are enlightened to watch out on their colleagues, this can be used in the encourage a behaviour change as everyone will be washing hands after visiting the latrine to avoid disgust by their friends. Also, as a way of acceptance, the pupils will wash their hands after visiting the latrine to maintain their friends at school. 

For mothers / caregivers attending post-natal clinics, motives can be used in behaviour change campaigns among them. This can be through the desire to care for their children. 

Use of motives in a handwashing behaviour change campaign can be done through organizing FGDs where participants discuss how their lives were before the crisis, what were their aspirations. this will also include the current living condition, what are they lacking. this will determine the approach in terms of handwashing strategy to implement. 

the motive tool will enable come up with different intervention considering that community members are not of the same status economically, however, target the majority members where you can have positive outcome towards handwashing with soap

In the development context, handwashing behaviour promote through the school the entry point of the community. As we know the school is a sub-community and students are the change agent. I want to shame my experience, during the open defecation free campaign in Nepal, we have mobilized the student. If the children want to do something they so at any cost. So handwashing behaviour change of parents, we have to aware and trigger to their children first. 

Traditionally we are so fixed with distributions of IEC posters and distribution of soaps/hygiene kits. This new dimension of social behaviour change using motives will be a game changer. As most colleagues has pointed out diseases outbreaks are short term and likewise behaviours falls back once outbreaks is over. Looking forward to learn more in coming session and from colleagues. 

I think this tool  is very well conceptualised and can be significant input into our response plans, if carried out properly. It simplifies a complicated concept into easy to use and practical oriented steps. Nice to see excel sheets contributing to decision making about behaviour.

i only suggest that we need to allow for locally identifiable cards to be used that the community can identify with.  I think this process can also be used for other assessments beyond handwashing.

In Vanuatu following COVID-19 a by-law has been passed in Luganville (the second largest town) that enforces shops to provide permanent handwashing stations for shoppers. This has been successful in increasing the number of handwashing stations, but use of them is still a problem. We are planning to roll out a household water filter campaign that focuses on the motive of a mother caring/nurturing her children, potentially a similar campaign for handwashing would help change handwashing behaviour.

Motives drive the practices and behaviours of the people, even though those seems to be irrational for us as practitioners. Other aspect is although the goals, dreams and reasons of people are different, the motives behind people are constant over the cultures, geographies, ethnicities etc. What important is to identify the exact behaviours that influences particular community for particular behaviour. Once these are identified through situational assessment, these should be based in developing the behaviour change communication tools/ assets. 

Motives can be used to identify factors or trigger points that people will connect with and which can be used constructively to compel them to act. Handwashing campaign messaging should be based on evidence generated in terms of what are the factors that will motivate people to practice handwashing with soap. Most often we see that successful campaigns always have an emotional component as people's behaviour are driven by emotions and not only by awareness or knowledge about something. Understanding motives should be embedded into designing any intervention as it is essential to not only ensure success of the campaign but also holds practitioners accountable to invest funds/resources efficiently and responsibly.

Motives is very important because it will compel or encourage one to move or take action.  This is a very good tool because we can see the different motives of people in the community.  However, they also need to given information so that their motives will be based on the information that they have.  Sometimes personal motives are very effective because for example the motive is npot to get sick to be able to continue with their economic activity and to also save on medine costs.  thus information is also vital for the community.

We have been using campaigns frequency in promoting positive behaviours and have been using the global days like global handwashing day, hygiene day, health day etc. to advocate for the purpose. 

Using motive tool, I would like to redesign my campaigning methodology meeting the requirement in my target context.