Inspired by JEN hygiene promotion

Currently around 77% of Syrian refugees in Jordan temporarily live in host communities outside of camps and are benefiting from the public services generously provided by the Government of Jordan such as education and health services.

In the last term, the number of Syrian children enrolled in the Jordanian public schools was around 30,000 students only while the number reached 70,000 students in September 2013 as the new term started. However, there are still 50,000 school-aged Syrian students don’t go to schools. It is the key issue for aid agencies to increase Syrian children’s access to education and to assist public schools whose learning environment have worsen due to the hugely increased numbers of students.

In Jordanian public schools of host communities, JEN is working on the renovation of water facilities,  sanitation facilities and hygiene promotion activities. Hygiene promotion activities consist of teacher trainings on hygiene education and student hygiene sessions done by the trained teachers.

Student hygiene sessions in some schools in Zarqa governorate were carried out last week by JEN’s hygiene promoters. The contents of student session were developed through sharing various education methods between JEN’s hygiene promoters and teachers in the teacher training.

In one classroom, one of the water-borne diseases, cholera, was the theme of the hygiene promotion activity. It started by students’ role-play  with a moral that a child who buys and eats snacks from an unhygienic food stall suffers from a stomachache and might go to a doctor. It was full-fledged roll-play, for example, the student who played the role of a stall seller painted a mustache on her face while the student who performed as a doctor checked up Vibrio cholera under a microscope.

[Students nailing the characters of the play]

The expressive role-play was followed by groups’ work in which each group wrote down about cholera such as causes, symptoms, prevention, and treatment on big papers followed by plenary discussions.

Although cholera outbreak has not been confirmed in Jordan so far, education and awareness of this sanitation and hygiene related epidemic can always be very useful in such emergency situations for both the Syrian refugees and the Jordanian host communities. . By rolling out the information acquired throughout the sessions, the students can be messengers in their families and small communities.

In the last stage of this student session, all students went to the water fountain and practiced the right way of hand washing.

[students washing hands (the third girl is the stall seller in the role-play with her mustache still painted on her face)]
Messages for water saving practices were written on the walls near the water fountains. The students in this class collected some coins, brought a can of paint, and painted such informative messages . This school has organized its own hygiene campaign where each class has individually implements its method of improving the hygiene environment. Another class brought rubbish bins and set them in different spots in the school premise.

[ Water saving messages written by students on the wall]

The improvement of school hygiene environment cannot be accomplished by JEN’s sole efforts. JEN strongly believes that it is essential to ensure the ownership of activities and motivate headmasters, teachers and students to do what they can do for their own good learning environment.

【JEN is now accepting donations. Your help would be very much appreciated.
DONATE here】