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'Twende na watoto!' (Go with children!): Developing On-the-job Training for School-based Child-to-Child in Tanzania

Harriet Mkilya, Child-to-Child Coordinator, Health Projects Abroad (HPA)-Singida, Sekiete Sekasua, Child-to-Child Coordinator, HPA-Tabora, Jenni Marshall, Water and Sanitation Coordinator, HPA-Tanzania

Together with two six-foot-tall flies and a rather large water germ, the HPA-Tanzania Child-to-Child team has been on tour with an extravaganza promoting health and hygiene awareness related to water and sanitation, enhancing teachers' Child-to-Child training and raising awareness of the Child-to-Child approach within communities.

The flies and germ were village health animators who created an entertaining participatory drama about children having the knowledge and the power to prevent disease in their homes. The drama was the starter for workshops that reached over 3,500 children, their teachers and parents during two three-week long tours, one in Singida Region (November 1999) and one in Tabora Region (July 2000).

The extravaganza’s objectives

HPA has been working with and promoting the Child-to-Child approach since 1994 in Tabora and 1997 in Singida, focusing primarily, though not exclusively, on primary school-based Child-to-Child. A review of these years of experience, together with the results of an assessment carried out in 1999, produced the following objectives for the work:

1.      To improve the awareness, understanding and application of the Child-to-Child approach in primary schools with children, teachers and other facilitators.

2.      To tackle this through appropriate ‘on-the-job’, project-based training for facilitators.

3.      To develop project-based training that addresses identified priority health and other issues affecting the children and schools targeted.

4.      To improve the awareness and understanding of the Child-to-Child approach within the schools’ environment – that is, for example, with the community and with government education/health personnel.

5.      From this, to build and improve support and training systems for Child-to-Child in schools – systems that operate at school, community, ward, district and regional level.

6.      To develop the use of appropriate creative and participatory techniques in schools, such as drama, music, arts, crafts, games etc.

7.      To produce Child-to-Child resources for dissemination and training (e.g. video and newsletter) so as to increase the impact of the work to other schools/Child-to-Child groups not targeted for the tours.

As usual, continued review and learning about the Child-to-Child programme’s progress through research, reflection and evaluation was also a goal of the activities.

Before the tour, or implementation phase of the project, extensive research was carried out. At national, regional and district level, this involved putting Child-to-Child in context. What are the education and health policies that Child-to-Child supports and should work within in Tanzania? What are other organizations or the government doing in the realm of children’s health education and rights? Research in the schools identified more specific training needs for facilitators on key health and development issues. These issues were decided by all involved to be water and sanitation and children’s rights to an education.

‘Twende na Watoto’ tour activities

Two days were spent in each school and activities kicked off with the drama. This encouraged children to join in, suggesting actions that would kill the water germs and flies and carrying them out to watch them keel over! Following the drama, children discussed and researched about which of the water and sanitation issues they had seen affects them most. They planned what activities they could do to improve their situation and started carrying them out. 

Some cleaned their village water sources, some demonstrated how to keep drinking water clean and safe, some learnt how to stop latrines from smelling by smoking out the odours (one group nearly smoked out the whole latrine!). Older children made tippy-taps and discussed communication methods for health messages, making posters to advise people to boil water. They created their own songs and dramas which they performed for parents and other community members at large health fairs, held at the end of the tour, which raised awareness of Child-to-Child in the area.

On the second day, some of the activities focused on the importance of education and girls’ and boys’ equal rights to go to school. Stories, quizzes, games and discussions were used with the children to address issues such as what prevents them getting an education, for example: household economics, workloads and other priorities at home and early marriage and pregnancy for older children. How do these issues affect children and how do they feel about it?

By working closely with the HPA facilitators throughout all the activities and then following these up in a review session, all teachers and health workers received an on-the-job refresher course in the Child-to-Child approach. They reviewed in particular the participatory approaches involved and how to combine Child-to-Child with their curriculum-based teaching rather than seeing it as something completely different. They also planned how to promote Child-to-Child out-of-the curriculum through supporting their school health clubs.

Spreading the word about Child-to-Child and ‘institutionalizing’

The tour teams in Singida and Tabora drew on a variety of skills and backgrounds that linked the coordinators from HPA with other health and education specialists from the region. These included education officers, school health programme coordinators and teachers from the Tabora Teacher Training College who all promote the approach to a far wider audience of children, teachers, health workers and government departments than the HPA programme can cover.

Raising awareness of Child-to-Child and children’s issues was another key objective of the work – awareness-raising at all levels from school to community, ward to district, regional to national. This is now being carried out by report dissemination, presentations and the distribution of materials being produced as an output of the project: a video filmed during the workshops by the BBC, a Child-to-Child newsletter and posters.

Was it successful?

The next stage of the work is monitoring and evaluating the development of the Child-to-Child approach in the schools and the changes in understanding and practices related to water and sanitation. Being realistic, we do not expect huge reductions in the incidence of diarrhoeal disease, for instance. However, initial observation and monitoring indicates improvements are beginning to take place at least in terms of knowledge and understanding. In the evenings children were spotted imitating the water germ that wriggles in your stomach to give you diarrhoea, and telling their younger brothers and sisters about the flies that love to live in dirty houses and make your food dirty. Some changes in the school, home and community water and sanitation environments have been noticed. Teachers gave very positive feedback about the on-the-job training as an effective method for practical learning about the approach. The network of external facilitators from government departments and other areas has been strengthened further and plans are underway for future initiatives. Maybe next time it will involve six-foot mosquitoes!

Simple ways to protect existing water sources in 
Mwanduigembe village, Singida

Photo:  HPA-Singida

For more information, contact: HPA-Singida, PO Box 1013, Singida, Tanzania (E-mail: singida@hpa.co.tz) 
or HPA-Tabora, PO Box 886, Tabora, Tanzania (E-mail: tabora@hpa.co.tz)