The Global Handwashing Day celebrated on October 15th is an annual global advocacy day dedicated to advocating for handwashing with soap as an easy, effective, and affordable way to prevent diseases and save lives.
Global Hand Washing Day was founded by the Global Handwashing Partnership and is an opportunity to design, test and replicate creative ways to encourage people to wash their hands with soap at critical times.
The first Global Handwashing Day in 2008 saw over 120 million children around the world washed their hands with soap in more than 70 countries. And since then, community and national leaders have used the avenue to spread the word about handwashing as an effective way of reducing the spread of germs into the human body.
The 2021 theme “Achieving hand hygiene at the point of care” emphasizes the importance of handwashing as a ritual behaviour for long term sustainability, which is very crucial especially with the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic. Handwashing has not only helped to mitigate the spread of the virus, but it has also reinforced the need and value for clean hands, as a gateway to saving lives.
CEF in its efforts towards promoting and achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development (SDGs) Goal 6, of clean water and sanitation, celebrated the 2021 Global Handwashing Day with the pupils of New City and Palm Avenue Primary Schools Mushin, Lagos.
The day was marked with an interactive session where volunteers of CEF engaged the students on effective handwashing behaviour change and increase awareness about the importance of handwashing with soap as an effective and affordable way to prevent disease amongst them.
Practical sessions were conducted by the volunteers on ways to wash their hands using water and soap for pupils from Primary 4-6 while Pupils from Primary 3 to Early Childhood 1&2 were taught healthy ways to prevent germs with fun educational materials (Coloring, Word search and puzzles)