Lusaka Clean Green and Healthy Schools

Lusaka Clean Green and Healthy Schools Initiative

About the Lusaka Clean Green and Healthy Schools

Lusaka City Council (LCC) has a mandate to protect the public against public health hazards through various public health sensitization programmes. In this regard LCC has been implementing a number of health education and awareness activities within the City. These activities have included school and community outreaches targeted at school going children as agents of change as well as community members within the peri urban areas. The focus of the outreach activities has been within the sphere of water and sanitation as a response to the vulnerability of peri urban areas of Lusaka to water borne diseases such as cholera and poor environmental sanitation primarily due to inadequate water supply, sanitation and solid waste management services. On the other hand, personal behaviours and practices in these communities greatly affect the wellbeing of the people. The purposeof these activities therefore have been to create awareness with the view to change behaviour among the targeted population.

Approach

The Think Act Be Smart School Education and Awareness Campaign is one that has been implemented through the collaboration of The Lusaka Water Security Initiative (LuWSI) in 2017. LuWSI is a multi-stakeholder collaboration system inspired by and working toward the vision of water security for the residents and businesses of Lusaka. At its core, it is a multi-stakeholder partnership between public sector, private sector, civil society and international actors, creating a platform for dialogue and governance structure for joint decision making. LuWSI partners engage in dialogue, analysis and knowledge generation, advocacy and awareness raising, project development and resource mobilisation. This leads to LuWSI’s partners collaborating with each other and other actors to implement strategic projects to concretely improve water security for Lusaka’s residents and businesses.

Approach of the TAB Smart is to train champions within schools whom thereafter championed the agenda of water security to other pupils within the schools and communities in which they live.

Challenge

The population of the peri-urban areas of Lusaka make up one third of Lusaka’s population. The peri-urban areas are characterised by issues such as poor sanitation facilities , solid waste management (just to mention but two) thus increasingly contaminating Lusaka’s underground water with faecal matter, hydrocarbons and other chemicals from both liquids and solid waste. Children are a vulnerable group in this scenario, but are also the most eager and open to learning therefore making them advocates of change.

Safe Back to School Campaign

The objective of the campaign is to support the safe reopening of all schools in Lusaka by putting in place measures that help mitigate the spread of COVID-19 in schools. This in turn will simultaneously help to protect surrounding communities from infection as both teacher and learner are safe.

The campaign is targeting a number of schools across 10 zones in the 33 wards of Lusaka district with priority for specific intervention, support and risk based consideration given to schools located in vulnerable communities. With over 958 schools in Lusaka, a total population of about 258,661 learners of and 70% of the city’s population living in vulnerable peri-urban areas, much of the campaigns interventions are located in these peri urban areas.

The key areas of intervention identified for the "Safe Back to School Campaign" includes provision of;

Safe drinking water for all in school
Safe and inclusive sanitation for all
Promotion of effective personal hygiene and menstrual hygiene measures (especially supervised hand washing with soap)
Sustainable Solid Waste and Sanitation Management (SWM) as well as
Information, Education and Communication (IEC) materials.

Results

The Think Act Be Smart School Education and Awareness campaign has achieved a number of mile stones. Which include:

Development of IEC materials

Establishment of relationships with the Ministry of Education, and the spirit of collaboration and the ability to work with multi-stakeholders.

Establishment of clubs and strengthening in cases were already present.

Existing Network: Relations has been established with partners, in the eight peri- urban communities and the ten schools were the campaign was implemented.

Trainings: Both Pupils and teachers were trained. About 414 pupils were trained and Training of Trainers was also conducted with 26 Teachers.

Materials development: A number of materials were developed and these included; Training manual; flip chart covering water security, sanitation, health and hygiene, and solid waste management; TAB Smart Comic book on three thematic areas; Training of Trainers guide for teachers to build capacity within the schools; Resource pack for theatre skills ; posters and talking walls ; and results from a Knowledge Attitude and Practice baseline study was undertaken.

Partners

Lusaka City Council (LCC) - Coordinator of the Lusaka Clean Green and Healthy Schools Initiative.
Lusaka Water and Sewerage Company (LWSC)
Zambian Breweries (ZB) - Manja Pamodzi
Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ)
Water and Sanitation Association in Zambia (WASAZA)
United Nations International Children's Fund (UNICEF)