Summary report of technical assistance to Save the Children/Egypt

Save the Children is implementing a water and sanitation project focusing on community development to serve the outlying poorest communities in upper Egypt. The project, funded for three years (1993-1996) by USAID/Egypt, seeks to improve the health and well-being of women and children by improving the quality of household water to reduce diarrhoeal diseases in children, to suggest appropriate technologies to achieve this, and to improve hygienic health behaviours through workshops and training manuals. This report describes the services and technical assistance which Water and Sanitation for Health Project (WASH) provided to Save the Children/Egypt in order to train staff to deliver health education in villages, to assist in the development of a health education manual for use in the project in Egypt, and to help in collaboration with other NGO's in Egypt and the Middle East to expand the capabilities in village health education efforts. The report includes descriptions of the workshops given, the health education training manual, and the lessons learned. A key purpose of the project is to introduce greater gender equality with respect to water and sanitation in the homes of project villages, including both specific household tasks and broader decision-making powers within families and this issue is fully discussed in the report. Also discussed is the serious problem of intestinal and hook worms and solutions for control are included as part of hygiene education training. The report concludes that through the services of WASH technical consultants, Save the Children staff were provided with a strategy for implementing an effective, integrated water, sanitation, and health project. The overall goal of the WASH interventions was met: better integration among the three project elements - health education, community development, and construction. Several appendices giving specific details about various facets of the project are included.