WASH United (WASH = WAter, Sanitation and Hgyiene): Harnessing the power of play to promote sanitation and hygiene
Example: Walk us through a specific example(s) of how this solution makes a difference; include its primary activities.
Impact: What is the impact of the work to date? Also describe the projected future impact for the coming years.
Spread Strategies: Moving forward, what are the main strategies for scaling impact?
Financial Sustainability Plan: What is this solution’s plan to ensure financial sustainability?
Marketplace: Who else is addressing the problem outlined here? How does the proposed project differ from these approaches?
Founding Story
Team
Thorsten
Kiefer
WASH United gGmbH
Please select
, Berlin
, Nairobi, (and in different locations)
Foundations, NGOs, Businesses, National government, Customers.
• 2012 Beyond Sport “Sport for Health” Award
• 2012 Ashoka Fellowship for WASH United Founder & CEO Thorsten Kiefer
• 2011 AfricaSan Award
• 2011 Global Sports Forum Award
6 - 12, 13 - 17.
After-School Provider, Other.
I am applying on behalf of a particular program or initiative.
Public (tuition-free), Other.
Extracurricular, Community.
Actively Designing Space & Culture as Essential Elements for Learning: Creating cost-effective methods to infuse a school with habits, language, and materials needed for learning through play.
RCT of game-based vs frontal learning / role of sportstars / of self-awareness
Game-based tools for sanitation and hygiene knowledge and behaviour change, M&E methodologies
- Increased knowledge on sanitation & hygiene
- Adoption of good wash behaviour (handwashing with soap, toilet use, menstrual hyiene)
- improvements in school WASH facilities (cleanliness, regular trainings, maintenance, ...)
- improved self-esteem
In the long-run: reduce the occurrence of diarrhea and reduce school drop-outs, especially among girls
a) we carry out a game-based curriculum designed to improve our beneficiaries' WASH knowledge and behaviour.
b) primarily in schools and youth sport clubs, but also communities
c) Trained local NGOs, teachers and peer educators regularly repeat sessions
d) A session takes several hours
e) local NGO partners, trained teachers and peer educators
f) Our games are very different from other games currently used by WASH sector organizations. WASH United games are action-oriented physical activities that take WASH issues out of the class-room, involving everyone in the class. They are not only extremely fun and exciting, but enable children to generate their insights through fun game experiences they share with their friends. Emotional rewards (like membership cards featuring our celebrity ambassadors) reinforce the experience.
The WASH sector provides prime proof for the fact that the world is ready to re-imagine learning. For decades, well-meaning experts assumed that building toilets would be enough. India and Africa are full of unused toilets that serve as chicken houses, storage space or temples. Fortunately, there is increasing recognition that infrastructure must go hand in hand with increased knowledge and behaviour change, and partly due to our work, the WASH sector is increasingly turning to games to help achieve just that.
Toilet poeple ready to play? The world is clearly ready to re-imagine learning!
To us, learning through play means to see the joy on a child's face when it has fun playing a great game with friends and learns at the same time. It also means playing games like the "World Toilet Cup" with Ministers responsible for WASH to break the ice and have frank and open discussions on issues that are often considered dirty and unspeakable.
In our work to change attitudes and behaviours around difficult issues such as toilets and menstrual hygiene management, learning through play, fun and games have proven to be absolutely essential ingredients for success.
For 2014:
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: 60%
GIZ: 20%
German Federal Foreign Office: 8%
Other (Georgetown University, Unicef, etc): 12%
Georgetown University – 80.000 USD – for the c
WASH United's goal is to make our innovative new approaches to WASH advocacy and behaviour change accessible to as many organizations as possible. To achieve that, we have developed a 3-layer business/distribution model, which allows us to offer standard tools, but also tailor-made solutions.
WASH United is non-profit, but to be able to provide consulting services, we will soon add a "Limited" to become a hybrid.
Invest in R&D for a „WASH Box“ with extremely low-costs games and a self-explanatory game manual that can be produced and used by everyone, everywhere.
Why? Because such a product would have huge potential to go to scale and R&D funds are extremely hard to get.
Partnerships with football clubs like Bayern Munich or federations like the International Cricket Council have helped us make our approach extra exciting for kids and adults. We work with streetfootballworld on a program called the WASH Challenge Cup, for which we adopt our WASH games for sport 4 development organizations. This has helped us improve our facilitation guides. More generally, feedback from our local partners has been critical.
Heeals India is one of the of the partner organizations for Menstrual Hygiene Day, a global advocacy initiative on the issue of menstrual hygiene management WASH United initiated in 2013. We first met Heeals on our "The Great WASH Yatra" travelling carnival, which inspired them to also use games.
In 15 years, a wide range of actors - government agencies, grassroots NGOs, individual teachers, even parents - has access to and works with a broad array of extremely affordable game-based WASH United tools and materials to promote WASH knowledge and behaviour change. As more actors do more effective work on the issue, we are moving towards a world in which everyone, everywhere has access to and uses a toilet and practises good hygiene.
Since 2010, WASH United and partners have trained more than 130.000 using our game-based curriculum in India, Bangladesh, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Lesotho, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Mali and South Africa.
Our most recent evaluation of a pilot project with Sanergy in 25 schools in Kenya showed significant increases in hand-washing practice compared to the baseline. See attached report. We would love to have better data re behavior change over time.
50,001 to 100,000
Yes
10-100
Fewer than 10
Games with Rules.
No.