Adolescent girls, the unaccounted force for WASH, emerging as the hope for the sustainability of the services

Md. Firoj Alam

The DFID funded GOB-UNICEF Sanitation, Hygiene and Water supply project in Bangladesh is now at the end of its time duration.  The  60  million dollar  funded project started  in 2007  to support 30  million population  of whose  1.3  million live in the low-income communities in  18 municipalities  in Bangladesh.

In every sense, the water, sanitation and hygiene situation is worse in the urban slums.  Despite a lot of effort from the donors, NGOs and government there is a little evidences of improvement of the slums conditions in Bangladesh.  The major reasons of not getting the slums improved are inadequate support, project based short term services, absence of right on the land, eviction threat etc.  At the same time these are also the causes of not sustaining the result of different projects.

Amid this situation the DFID supported project started in 18 Pourashavas. The packages of the services are common:  water, sanitation and hygiene. The implementation approach is not also uncommon. It is implementing the hardware through Pourashava based on the demand created in the community, and providing the software for maintenance of the hardware and hygiene practice through the NGOs staff at the community. What came almost unnoticed and perhaps an uncommon approach for WASH is the creation of enormous workforce through development of the adolescent girls within the community. Over last five years these work forces have  become matured and now almost ready to take-over the project activities from the CHP (community Hygiene Promoters), the paid frontline staff of the NGOs of the project. Adolescent groups take no financial benefit from the project. 

The rural component of the same project has a concern of the continuation of the hygiene promotion activities after departure of the NGOs.  In the urban areas the vacuum of the CHPs going to be created after departure of the NGOs can be fulfilled by these enthusiastic adolescent girls. The urban component of the GOB-UNICEF project works with 118164 households in 18 Municipalities. By this time, a total of 11800 adolescent girls from these pourashavas joined voluntarily to the program activities, means 1 adolescent girl is working for 10 households in her communities. One CHP is responsible for around 500 households in the slums.





 It is not that they are strong only by number. They are strong also in their capacity. These adolescent groups have been trained on three major issues: sanitation, safe water and menstrual hygiene management.

Traditionally, the support comes to   the slums regarding WASH from outside is merely latrine and water technology. When it is a very sensitive project, the hygiene education gets included in the project. The issue of menstrual hygiene which is an issue of water, sanitation and hygiene at a time hardly gets an attention of the service providers.

The revolutionary works that these adolescent groups are doing is deliberation of messages related to menstrual hygiene management.  They are not serving the menstruating women only with the words, I mean messages, but they are making also the facilities available to the hands of the menstruating women and girls.  They have established shops in the community called “SANIMART” where they sell sanitary pad and other cleaning agents and tools like soap, detergents toilet brush, tooth brush, sandals etc. Cosmetics items are also available there. More interestingly, entrepreneurship quality has developed among the girls who are running these SANIMARTS. The trained adolescent girls are making sanitary pads, selling it in their own shop and keeping the books of accounts quite efficiently.

A SANIMART run by a group of 11 adolescent girls in Sirajgonj sells product of USD 100- 200 each month, 10% -20% of which they earn as profit.  The calculation of last six month shows a progressive trend of sell and profit. Being involved to this productive process the satisfaction that these marginalised girls are getting is unaccountable in cash. Eyes of none can scape it who visits these SANIMARTs. 

In the mind of anybody a question may arise.  Why these adolescent girls are so interested to work voluntarily for the program? Naturally in the adolescent stage of life human beings are full of life energy. Energy moves. This life energy moves to find an outlet. If this energy is channelled through the creative outlet, it turns into creativity.  If it does not find creative out let. It is destructive, which we define usually as distracted youth force. Normally, the human being is afraid to be distracted and always finds the opportunity to utilize this energy in positive way.  The advantaged class in our society has enormous opportunity to channelize the youth energy positively, while the disadvantaged class just misses it. And, in the whole life they can’t cover it up.  Life ends with the pain of failure, despair and dissatisfaction.  This feeling is common in most of the slum dwellers.

Here, the case of involvement of so many adolescent girls enthusiastically with this project is not a surprising   phenomenon. In the small towns in Bangladesh, the adolescent girls, especially the girl in the low-income communities have no meaningful thing to do. They have to spend the valuable life energy apparently in non-productive purpose like helping mother in cooking, washing dishes or taking care of younger brothers and sisters. However, the inner urge to be involved to the bigger things always lurks inside the human mind. It is also lurking in the mind of these girls though they missed education because of the poverty.  The GOB-UNICEF project came as an opportunity for these girls to get involved with the bigger things. It could have happened for any other project which is acceptable to the community.

The WASH activities are very popular in the communities because of many reasons like (i) it is essential for life (II) it is related to dignity to life and (III) it saves the life.  It has the immediate and tangible output and finally it has a huge demand in the community especially in the deprived urban slums.  Getting involved to such issues, these adolescent girls find themselves important and honoured which are the motivating factors as well that worked as the cause of their involvement and keeping it continued.

Another synergy will happen in future.  These adolescent girls are the potential mothers also. In Bangladesh, 100,000 children under the age of 5 years die each year from diarrhoeal diseases. The unawareness of the mothers and the caregivers is the main cause of this unexpected death. The project is spending a lot of time, energy and money to raise the awareness among the mother and caregivers of the U5 children. Apart from their present role that they play, i,e educating their family and neighbours on hygiene , they will be able to take care of their  own babies appropriately  when they will become mother. Again, leadership, entrepreneurship and empowerment in other words are the important qualities of the life that these adolescent girls are achieving.  It is contributing to the achievement of Millennium Development Goals-3 directly for Bangladesh, i,e promotion of gender equality and empowerment of women.

 ( Md. Firoj Alam is a program officer of UNICEF Bangladesh