Earlier this summer, Yesenia Perez, our hygiene education instructor, and I attended a weeklong water education course taught by CaribbeanSEA’s Maria Cooksey and was sponsored by EGE Haina.
This class featured several students from Batey Cuchilla (where WWR has installed a WASH in Schools project), teachers and school directors from the local community.
Over the course of the week, we learned tricks about water conservation, the local environment and how to protect it, facts about diseases common to the area, and many other things. We also learned fun, interactive games to teach children hygiene education and tested the local water supply.
My favorite activity we learned was “about poo-lución.” In this game, our instructor, Maria, demonstrated how easy it is to spread germs when someone does not wash their hands thoroughly with soap after using the restroom. The instructor sprinkled glitter over one student’s hands, and that student then walked around the class and shook hands and patted people on the back. By the time the student had reached the other side of the classroom, everyone was covered in germs…I mean glitter…and the importance of hand washing was demonstrated in a simple, engaging and visual manner.
Thanks to this class, we now have a number of new tools in our bag of tricks, and we cannot wait to teach water education to the students at our newly completed projects.
