WHAT HUMANITARIAN NEED IS BEING ADDRESSED?

Most of the time, emergency response programs prioritise adult needs rather than children’s’. As a result, children living in refugee camps face obstacles when using latrines, and hand washing stations.  The poor condition of WASH facilities enhances the risk of slipping and falling inside the restrooms, encouraging the children to resort to open defecation and improper handwash practice. This practice in turn enhances the risk of developing waterborne and helminthic infections among camp residents despite rigorous disease control measures by public health professionals.  

WHAT IS THE INNOVATIVE SOLUTION BEING ADOPTED AND HOW WILL IT IMPROVE EXISTING HUMANITARIAN PRACTICE?

The UCCE method will be used to bring out community-centred solutions.  

 This will be done in 3 phases: 

1. Preparatory Phase: We will conduct an Interactive digital survey among children aged 6 to 12 to identify barriers to using existing WASH facilities.
2. Implementation Phase: We will arrange a Co-Creation session with children and their caregivers to identify solutions for selected WASH-related problems identified from the survey. Based on their suggestion, 80 latrines and 80 hand washing stations will be developed and modified.
3. Evaluation Phase: We will conduct another interactive digital survey and qualitative evaluation to understand the implementation uptake. It will enable us to identify barriers, benefits, and opportunities to scale the approach in other humanitarian settings.

WHAT ARE THE EXPECTED OUTCOMES OF THIS PROJECT? 

We hypothesize that our primary expected outcome will be a 60% increase in user satisfaction with the latrine and handwashing facilities. Additionally, reported use of latrine and handwashing facilities will increase from 30% at baseline to 70% post-implementation among children. The cost of child-friendly latrine installation should be <120% compared to traditional latrines. 

Through qualitative evaluation, we will explore to what extent communities participated in the UCCE process and the extent to which implemented modifications in latrine and handwashing station design matched the their expectations. As well as identifying the barriers and enablers to use of WASH facilities by children living in FDMN camps.