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Project: Rural Sanitation and Hygiene Promotion in Nigeria
Poor sanitation and hygiene is deadly, with children under-5 most at risk. Concern Universal is helping introduce basic hygiene and sanitation to families across rural Nigeria.
1,000
Open Defecation Free Villages
138
Community representative Trainers
The Crisis
Two-thirds of the Nigerian population lack access to basic toilets and hand-washing facilities. Unhygienic practices such as open defecation, a lack of sanitation facilities, and the resulting contamination of water contributes to the highest prevalence rate of diarrhoea in Africa, accounting for around 150,000 deaths of children under-five. This lack of basic hygiene and sanitation impacts on health, wealth and progress- especially for those in rural villages.
How we help
By adopting basic hygiene practices, families can nearly reduce diarrhoeal diseases in children by around half. Concern Universal helps educate families on good basic hygiene. We encourage villages to become ‘Open Defecation Free’ and introduce simple, low-cost technology like tippy-taps and sanitation platforms. Using Community-led Sanitation, we ensure that the change is sustainable and replicable. Representatives from communities are trained to go out and talk to surrounding communities of the benefits they have seen from basic hygiene and sanitation. We also provide new water points and train communities how to maintain them. Working at a government level, we help promote behaviour change, develop policy and share learning.
What we aim to achieve
Concern Universal will encourage half the population (across Cross River and Benue states) to construct their own toilet. We will ‘train the trainers’ – teach138 people to train individuals in the local community on good hygiene and sanitation. We aim to help 1000 communities put an end to Open Defecation and establish the use of basic toilets for 220,000 families.
Funding partners
We know from decades of experience that by working with others – and pooling our expertise and resources – we can achieve much more than we ever could on our own. That might mean working with small, grassroots organisations that have a better understanding of the local context, or joining with other international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to reach greater numbers of people with our campaign messages.
Global Sanitation Fund | Federal Government of Nigeria | Diagio Foundation | Polish Aid | PZ Cussons
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