Hygiene promotion

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Agree with @Benedict Mutua9. This is always based on context and the nature, intensity and severity of the emergency. SPHERE is a guidance to develop your context specific standards. For example, in the Rohingya Refugee response in Cox's Bazar, the local WASH sector has a standard of 1 HP staff for 500 household. This is because, we use HP volunteers for the Hygiene Promotion. 1 HP volunteer for 100 Household. So, 1 HP staff managing 5 HP volunteers. 

Thanks for this thought Zahida, the WASH'em tool does recommend exactly this at the end, to not reduce hygiene promotion to one way messaging - talking at the community, but engage in informed exchange with creative tools. 

Excellent question Harm I agree with you that could be the next step in moving the WaSH'Em tool forward. I believe there are a few examples from other countries on their website. Meanwhile what I do to help my design is :

-Evaluate the needs of supplies brought by the recommended activities (mirrors etc..) to build my supplies plan and adjust my hygiene kits and sensitization materials

-Assess the number of staffs needed for each activity and possible mutualization/pooling of Hygiene Promoters who could do more than one activity

-Budget these into the overall plan

-Prioritize by impact vs resources: prioritizing the activities which require the less HR/Budget/time but with the biggest (potentially/foreseen) impact 

-Include them into my workplan or HP action plan, starting with those which are the easiest and less time consuming (to be able to evaluate sooner some impact) 

-Make sure you frequently discuss with your implementing team to appraise and assess after some time to constantly re-adjust priorities and the way you do it

Hi Wilson,

You might think they know but in reality they might not know that well. Also, even knowing is not enough as we need them to practice. There is always factors from the emergency that hinder adequate behaviours and always a pourcentage of the affected population that does not practice, maybe because they lost their asset/handwashing supplies and handwashing becomes often a deprioritized activity when the emergency strikes. I would therefore recommend a quick assessment to confirm your initial thoughts and to confirm noone is left behind.