For the over 400 children living in 20 villages in Namakkal and Rasipuram taluks who have turned agents of change in the personal hygiene patterns of their parents and friends, the idea of cleanliness was not something that they learnt through didactic lectures, but rather concepts they imbibed through a set of simple games. These children have harnessed their passion for gaming into a campaign for better personal hygiene among adults across several villages.
S.L. Sathiya Nesan, Director of the NGO LEAF Society which took up personal hygiene as a project in these villages, said the children were mentored through Joyful Learning Centres where games such as snake and ladder, memory card and other dice-related games were modified by depicting the benefits of sanitation and hygienic practices.
In snake and ladder, the children climb up the ladder when they practise good habits like washing hands before eating. They go down through the snake when they were into unhygienic practices.
V. Koushika (7), of Sukkampatty Village near Mohanur, and her friends play these games after school hours. “Learning through these games is fun and I have asked my parents to build a toilet near our house,” she said.
Her neighbour N. Barathi (12) said: “Villagers used to defecate on an open private land near our village, but the land is now fenced. We are facing difficulty in maintaining our village clean,” she said and added that she too had persuaded her parents to construct a toilet near their house.
The two girls are among the 25 active members of the Joyful Learning Centre in that village. Only two of those children have toilets in their house. “Parents of the remaining 23 children have taken efforts to obtain a loan of Rs.10,000 to construct a small toilet. The loan could be repaid in easy instalments of 12 to 18 months,” Mr. Nesan added.
Personal hygiene diary
Children are also trained to maintain a personal hygiene diary to ensure that they brush their teeth twice a day, wash their hands with soap before and after food, wear sandals, use toilets, wash their hands after defecation and use dustbins.
On the context for the programme, Mr. Nesan pointed to a recent study by the Water and Sanitation Programme of the World Bank that stated that lack of sanitation cost India the equivalent of 6.4 per cent of its Gross Domestic Product and was easily among the biggest problems faced by the country.
“Open defecation is the major reason for spread of water-borne diseases which claims the life of one child every 20 seconds (globally). We tried sensitising the adults in these villages to the ill-effects of open defecation and other unhygienic practices, but it was not fruitful,” he observed.
The NGO then approached the issue by sensitising children aged between 5 and 14 in a bid to turn them into change agents.
The focus was on effecting a behavioural change and through it an attitudinal change. Aiming to make clean habits a fundamental choice for the children, the NGO launched the initiative in five villages in 2010 and extended to 20 villages in 2011.
After the launch of the programme, a survey by the NGO among the 450 children in these villages shows commendable changes in their personal hygiene patterns, and also among their families and friends at school.
“Nearly 90 per cent of them influenced members of their family, Mr. Nesan added.
Motivated
He pointed out that 87 per cent of the children discussed personal hygiene with their friends and students from other villages who are studying in the government schools where the change makers are studying. Motivated by the successful results shown by children in these villages, the Director said that his organisation would extend these concepts to more villages in the coming years.
Making personal hygiene a part of curriculum will help in preventing the spread of many diseases, he said.
