A
report on the campaign done to sensitize and promote WASH Programme
Submitted by
ANKUSH
BHATTACHARJEE
JEPULEEN DUTTA
BINOY
SONOWAL
NANDAN C BORUA
DEEPKAMAL
BORAH
SUDESHNA SAIKIA
DEVID
HAZARIKA ADITYA
ASHISH KASHYAP
IPSHITA
SHARMA
AVILEKH GAUTAM
CONTENTS: Page
No
1.
Acknowledgement..........................................................
2.
Abstract..........................................................................
3.
Introduction: What,
Where and
Why?...........................
4.
Objective of the
study.....................................................
5.
Methodology...................................................................
6.
Results..............................................................................
7.
Suggestions....................................................................
8.
Conclusion.......................................................................
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:
We have taken effort in this project. However, it would
not have been possible without the kind support and help of many individuals
and organizations. We would like to extend our sincere thanks to all of them
and we are highly indebted to our course teacher Mr. Abhijit Handique for his
guidance and support for providing necessary information regarding the project.
We would like to express our special gratitude to
the secretary of KALYAN ASHRAM, Miss
Bina Borah.
Our thanks and appreciations also go to our
classmates in developing and executing the project and to the people who have
willingly helped us out with their abilities.
Date: 30-05-2018
ABSTRACT:
In
the light of the development communication, the purpose of the program was to
sensitize and assesses the impact of WASH initiative in the community. The
program addressed and focused on the dimensions of health and hygiene
development in the Ashram and how to imbibe the boarders with the appropriate
ways to attain a better health. The program tried to initiate the ideas of
health and hygiene promotion through community participation. This was affected
through identifying the basic components of health and hygiene including a
better understanding of the problems and hindrances relating to Menstrual
Hygiene. The study employed a baseline survey design. It collected both
qualitative and quantitative data through document structured questionnaires,
focus group discussions, observation checklists, and key informant interviews.
The study concluded that development communication was effective in achieving
positive change in a group of adolescent girls, but it focused on core issue
like menstrual hygiene and food and nutrition among the adolescent and children
group. The findings of the program highlighted on achieving the end goal of
providing a better understanding of hygienic environment and health development
for children to learn and grow.
INTRODUCTION- What, Where
& Why?
Communication for Development involves understanding
people, their beliefs and their values, the social and cultural norms that
shape their lives. It involves engaging communities and listening to adults and
children as they identify problems, propose solution and act upon them.
Communication for Development is seen as a two way process for sharing ideas
and knowledge using a range of communication tools and approaches that empower
individuals and communities to take action to improve their lives.
The selected site for the program was 'KALYAN ASHRAM' situated in Central
Chowkitingee, Dibrugarh, Assam. The ashram is basically a residential hostel specially for the girls who belongs from rural under
developed areas throughout the state in the age group of seven to sixteen
years.
KALYAN ASHRAM is a national organization
spread throughout the country with 11 branches in Assam. The organization's key
goal is to create a cultural harmony by adopting children from diverse ethnic
groups by providing them with food, lodging, education and other co-curricular
activities in the form of skill sets.
Following up the assessment procedure, a 30 day
intervention program was designed accordingly to meet the needs of the lagging
factors in relation to WASH.
Menstrual
Hygiene & Food Nutrition has been the core areas in the focal length of the
overall initiative.
OBJECTIVES:
ü
To
sensitize the boarders of the ashram regarding menstrual hygiene.
ü
To
address key issues of food and nutrition.
ü
To
infuse the importance of personal hygiene.
METHODOLOGY:
The evaluation of the WASH programme used a non-experiential
design since no comparison could be made between ‘the actual and the
counterfactual (control group)’. Even though it might have been possible to
look at the ‘before and after’ situation of the programme in a comparable
manner, the evaluation period was not long enough to permit the program. The
evaluation had an additional brief to draw lessons learned for the purpose of
improving the implementation of similar programmes in future. Taking all of this
into account, the study focused on changes before and after the project within
the same population.
The evaluation process had four component methodologies:
·
Key informant interviews
·
Interviews with the management and school going
pupils residing in the Ashram
·
Physical
inspection of WASH infrastructure and field observations
·
As in
other evaluation assignments, the absence of key baseline information e.g.
health status before the WASH programme, awareness levels, hygiene practices,
school clubs on sanitation made it impossible to evaluate the programme
entirely based on quantitative evidence.
·
Qualitative methods were therefore adopted in
order to understand the perspectives of the programme stakeholders.
For
the campaign, we used some tools to communicate with the children and make them
understand the topics we wanted to touch. We used verbal communication as the
baseline tool. We asked them about the problems they were facing in the ashram
as well as their native faces.
Tools used for the purpose of communicating with the
boarders of the Ashram:
v Focus Group Discussion
v Audio and Visual Aid
v Filling up of questionnaire by one to
one interaction
RESULTS:
Main
objective of our campaign was to make the children aware about the need of
personal hygiene practices, menstrual hygiene practices and necessity of food
nutrition. In the initial stage, we started off with the personal hygiene
practices. The children were amused to know about the existence of the minute
organisms spread all around our environment. We told them about the need of
brushing teeth, having daily baths, hand washing , toilet hygiene etc; they
understood the concept and told us that they will follow up the hygiene
practices we have told. Next we had a session on the most important part of the
campaign which is menstrual hygiene. The girls were very curious to know more
about the cycle and events related to it. We show them some short films to
understand the issues in an audio-visual media. We noticed that the girls had
some misconceptions and confusions initially, but after the session many of
their doubts were cleared. Additionally, we talked about food nutrition
especially at the teenage. We told them about the hormonal activities which
take place and resulting changes in the body structure during this time. Then
we told the students that due to the hormonal activities, our body requires
better nutrition supply such as carbohydrates, protein, iron and calcium etc
and we can consume these as vegetable, fruits, milk, meat etc. The girls got an
idea on what should be their diet in the growing age.
SUGGESTIONS:
Development
is a long term process. If we want this programme to be more fruitful, we can follow
up the process by taking some initiatives to achieve the desired outcome. We
can arrange for a health check-up camp and a nutritional knowledge camp in the
coming days. This would be helpful for the pupils as experts on these two
topics can provide them better knowledge on these important issues. Also we can
inform them about the ongoing health policies which are run by the government
especially for the female populace.
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