Global Hand-washing Day 2013

Global Hand-washing Day for 2013 was celebrated at Shimoni Primary School in Shimoni Village and GVI Shimoni Kenya’s Health Project was invited to attend and help out at the event. So, to begin with…let’s talk about a short overview of what the day is all about…

Davis(Safe shimoni chairperson) opens the meeting.

“Global Hand-washing Day was originally created for children and schools, but can be celebrated by anyone promoting hand-washing with soap. Each year, over 200 million people are involved in celebrations in over 100 countries around the world. Global Hand-washing is endorsed by a wide array of governments, international institutions, civil society organizations, NGOs, private companies, and individuals”.

·         “Foster and support a global culture of hand washing with soap.

·         Shine a spotlight on the state of hand washing in every country.

·         Raise awareness about the benefits of hand washing with soap”.

These are pretty much the main objectives of Global Hand washing day and were a great guide for us when we were asked to prepare some posters for the event. The week before this day was due to be held, Mr. Patrick (the Public Health Officer) approached GVI and invited us to collaborate on the day and prepare some informative and exciting posters relating to hand washing. So….we set off on our graphic designing, mental brainstorming and health-related artistic road to some wicked posters that we could show the kids on the day!

Shimoni Primary School student listening keenly

Gabrielle Gunners (Health Project volunteer) used her amazing artistic skills and produced a masterpiece step-by-step guide to washing your hands correctly, with only her bare hands and a pen! We were then able to photocopy this and laminate the copies before taping them to areas near the school’s toilet facilities. Hopefully creating a successful, friendly reminder to the kids of the process when they need to wash their hands after using the toilets.

Allan Farah shows how to properly wash your hands 

So….after our amazing posters were complete and Global Hand washing day had arrived, GVI headed to Shimoni Primary to help the Community Health Workers (CHW’s) with their presentations. Madame Mwanamvua (CHW) gave a thorough and informative presentation on the method to washing your hands, the kids seemed to be watching closely and we had some volunteer students come up and demonstrate to the group. After some more presentations from the CHW’s and the Public Health Officer we concluded a successful hand-washing day. Hopefully this was able to increase the student’s awareness of how, when and why to soap up and wash your hands!

CHW's, and GVI Volunteers
Jackson Vukovic – Health Project Field Staff

Global Hand-washing Day 2013