Gender Sensitive School Sanitation
"Through Children's Eyes", was a
project exploring primary school children's
perceptions and experiences of schooling in Uganda. It vividly demonstrated the dire state of school
sanitation in Uganda. Flowing out of that project, the
Minds Across Africa Project approached Dr. Musaazi
at the Faculty of Technology, Makerere University, and asked him to collaborate on a project to develop
models of girl friendly toilets. An important aspect of this work was looking at how to deal with the
effective management of menstruation in the design and construction of school sanitation systems,
particularly in terms of creating facilities where girls can change with adequate privacy.
The need for safe and hygienic facilities means also paying attention to the proper and private disposal
of the used materials.
Seven teams of senior undergraduate students in the Faculty of Technology
worked under
Dr Musaazi's supervision to develop models of gender-sensitive toilets for use in
primary schools in Uganda. The challenge posed to the students was to develop an affordable
stanza of toilets for use in a local primary school. The toilets also needed to be built using
locally available materials, and needed to be environmentally friendly. The students developed seven
innovative designs. The best of these was constructed at Makerere University Primary School,
which is located on the campus. Dr Musaazi is currently monitoring its use to enable the detection of flaws
for potential improvement.
During 2003-2006, a follow-up programme was undertaken with a team of
researchers
from
Makerere University and
University of Kyambogo University. It involved Dr Musaazi working with in-service head teachers
attending the Nakaseke Core Primary Teacher Training College (CPTTC) investigated
to improve the management of school hygiene and sanitation particularly by taping into both new knowledge
resources at community level and by encouraging the adoption of more efficient and effective use of natural
resources and simple technologies.
To find out about the
appropriate ATPS that have been developed (PPTs) click here