Here is the first article submitted for the ’Tell Us a Story – for pride and a prize’ contest launched in February 2010 Source Bulletin No 59, submitted by Ms Vijita Fernando from Sri Lanka.
Sitting under a tree watching the final stage of a water project to give women of Bandaragama water on tap, I noticed the swollen feet of the woman sitting next to me.
“I teach in the school here. My school day sometimes stretches to eight hours. We have no toilets in the school and I have to wait till I go home to go to relieve myself…. Sadly, even the teenage girls go to the bush to relieve themselves……but as a teacher I can’t do that. We need toilets for our school…my feet are swollen due to urine retention, the doctor tells me… Water provision is fine, but what about toilets for our schools?” D.M. Renuka, head of the coeducational school in her village asked me in whispers.
That brief conversation was the entry point to a project which provided hygienic toilets to her own school and twenty seven other schools in the Bandaragama area during the period 2007/2009. The Decade Service (DS), a consortium of 38 Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs) was financially assisted by the Norwegian Church Aid (NCA) in this effort. Targetting schools which had no toilets and then those which had unusable toilets in a deplorable state, the DS built 41 toilets where the need was most urgent within the first three months of the project.
Each school got 4 to 5 toilets according to the number on roll. There were separate ones for the girls and boys and one for the staff.
“Sanitation in schools is not just limited to building toilets. There was an even greater need to train the children to use them hygienically. Orientation sessions on use, on keeping the toilets clean and hygiene education on the adverse effects of defecating in the open were conducted even before construction was completed, “ says Shirley Rodrigo, Executive Director, Decade Service.
The toilets became a community project in which everyone in the village participated. They were diligent listeners together with the children when health officials of the health education services from nearby town of Kalutara spoke to them on sanitation and the need to inculcate healthy habits among children.
“Parents, the Parent Teacher Association (PTA) were all at hand together with other community folk, providing advice, support, bricks made in their own kilns and even unskilled labour”, recounts S.M. Sumanatilaka who managed the project for the DS.
The DS project also had the blessings of health officials and the members of the Provinicial Councils who helped the Executive Director to access health officials for lectures and demonstrations to the school children.
In Sri Lanka primitive and unhygienic means of defecation and urinating in rural areas have been the cause of many illnesses especially among children who form one fifth of the country’s population of twenty million people. According to the Ministry of Health, diarrhoea and ailments related to worm infestation are common in children in the under developed and unserved areas of the country where defecation is in the open.
The entire project consisting of costs of construction, technical assistance, and costs of staff cost US$80,000 ( 8 million Sri Lankan rupees) benefiting about 300 children, both boys and girls.
As an innovative way of assessing the success of the project the DS conducted a special painting competition among the school children who had been given new toilets to present their impressions of the toilets and how these had affected their lives. There were 300 drawings from children of five and six years to teenagers in the A-Level classes. Some were whimsical and funny, yet perceptive, presenting rare insights into the importance of a facility that urban folks take for granted.
P.R. Wickramasinghe, Principal of the Payagala North Central school said that the students are more disciplined after they new toilets were introduced. “There is no running to the woods now, sometimes on false pretences!” he said.
Principal Renuka whose swollen feet started it all was particularly happy about her teenage girl students. “The lack of toilets affected them badly. The situation made the older girls leave school at times and even if they didn’t they would miss classes when they had their periods.”
Sandini Samara, 16 is most happy that with the school toilets her parents will let her stay in school till she sits her final exams. “There is even a place to keep the soap!” exclaimed eight-year old Sanidu Ishan on his first visit inside the spanking new toilet.
“Clean, safe and dignified toilet and hand washing facilities help ensure that girls get an education they need and deserve. Education for a girls means that the whole community benefits…” observes Anne M Veneman,of UNICEF.
The DS’s school toilet project has become a benchmark for similar schemes in nearby rural villages. Seeing the advantages of hygienic toilets in this project and on the request of the community in several villages in the adjoining community Beruwela, DS has launched a scheme to provide sanitation facilities for 23 villages in the district which will cover schools too.
Will the students, teachers and the community ensure that the toilets will be hygienically used and properly maintained? Will they make use of the ‘lessons’ they learned during the orientation session?
This is the challenge that faces the providers and the users both!
End notes : Bandaragama is a village in the Kalutara district, approximately 45 kms from the capital, Colombo. Beruwala is a townlet in the same district.
Sri Lanka is an island nation of 20 million people consisting of several ethnic groups, situated at the southern tip of the Indian sub continent.
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