Rural Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Projects

T.A-CRUSADE- UGANDA focuses on ensuring equitable access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) education for the poorest communities, schools and households. We empower the poorest rural communities in Nakifuma to provide clean water and healthy homes for children and their families to thrive. We partner with villages and schools to address critical gaps in water, sanitation, and hygiene by building or renovating WASH infrastructure, coaching community members as well as helping them to form and build capacity of the water user committees.

Access to water and sanitation is essential to women and girls’ social and economic development.

T.A-CRUSADE-UGANDA constructs improved gender-friendly WASH facilities in local schools. Promoting WASH services and behaviour in schools confers several benefits in terms of increased school enrolment, attendance and retention, greater gender equity (in case to education and hygiene needs) and improved educational and health outcomes. Additional, students can serve as powerful agent of change, adopting hygiene behaviours themselves and encouraging their families and communities to do the same.

Menstrual Hygiene

The subject of menstruation however, is too often taboo, and has many negative cultural attitudes associated with it, including the idea that menstruating women and girls are “contaminated”, “dirty” and “impure”. Women and girls in rural settings like Nakifuma County and in particular girls in schools suffer most from stigma and lack of services and facilities to help them cope with the physical and psychological pains they undergo during their menstrual periods; inadequate preparations for the young girls not yet experiencing menstrual hygiene, lack of or inadequate water to clean and wash the body, lack of materials managing menstrual hygiene, private space and wash rooms and inappropriate facilities for disposal of materials for those who have used pads. In spite of these issues, menstrual hygiene has been routinely ignored by professionals in the water, health and education sectors. In Nakifuma County, most girls and women repurpose cloths and rags, which they wash and dry during their periods. These materials are familiar, convenient, affordable, and absorbent but in most situation may be uncomfortable and unsanitary. Having one’s period demands access to affordable sanitary pads or other clean and absorbent products, a discreet place to change or dispose of them, and water sources to wash hands, sanitary products, and stained garments. Women and girls need to feel safe and comfortable to manage their periods while at work or school, and young girls need information about what menstruation is, what it signals about their fertility, and how to safely handle it each month.

T.A-CRUSADE- UGANDA trains tailors and seamstresses in Nakiwaate Village who are locally available to give back to the communities that have nurtured them through production of reusable sanitary pads. The only limitation is the cost of materials required to do keep the production continuous. In all the schools that the sanitary pads are distributed, the organisation endeavors to increase awareness on the relevance of good menstrual hygiene management.

Menstrual Waste Management in Schools

Women and girls face constraints during menstruation that determines how and where they dispose of menstrual absorbents. Locally girls remain absent from school during menstruation because of the lack of disposal facilities for used pads and cloth.

T.A-CRUSADE-UGANDA sensitizes schools about menstrual waste management and recommends the construction of Incinerators. Incineration is an option for managing disposal of menstrual waste, particularly in worksites, schools and dormitory settings. It is a manner to achieve pathogen treatment, waste reduction and on-site waste management. Incinerators are properly vented to provide an effective and discrete way of disposing of menstrual absorbents.