Tanzania | A successful year for the MKAJI project

The Maji Kwa Afya ya Jamii (MKAJI) Project aims to establish sustainable safe water supply,  sanitation and hygiene services at 94 health facilities in the Dodoma Region, Tanzania. 2018 has been a great year for the MKAJI project, since 33 rural primary health care facilities were upgraded with WASH infrastructure and 1122 people have been trained on operation and maintenance of the infrastructure, infection prevention control and improving  hygiene practices, safe motherhood, and other topics such as water governance and woman in leadership skills.

Woman in leadership skills is a training trajectory that empowers women to contribute to the growth and wellbeing of the community. Often women in the rural areas of Dodoma are not well represented at the village government level. By training women in leadership skills in water management we increased their confidence to take up public roles. Women were trained in water governance,  WASH financial management  and business models. Through this training we hope to strengthen the position of women within the community, giving them the tools to have an active role in water management, and increase the number of women representatives within water management committees. By the end of the project in July 2019 at least 550 women will be trained on leadership skills.

Another aspect that illustrates best practices developed in the MKAJI project, is the fact that local government is interested to copy the comprehensive approach of the project, whereby four intricately related key areas; improving access to water supply and sanitation facilities, strengthening governance and community participation in water management, promoting hygiene measures and practices and integrating gender and social accountability aspects in the implementation are implemented simultaneously. Construction designs and training material were shared and this has resulted in several spin off initiatives in which district government follow the MKAJI designs. In Kongwa district the district government identified 32 more health facilities outside of the MKAJI scope that would require upgrading of WASH hardware and software to ensure a safe environment. Currently Kongwa district government is developing a strategy for these 32 health facilities along the lines of the MKAJI designs and training material.

To ensure a lasting legacy within the communities and health centers the MKAJI project has developed training videos on Infection Prevention Control (IPC) and the link with WASH, as well as behavioral change towards improved hygiene practices in communities. The reason for developing these training videos is because we believe in the need to change behaviour in a sustainable way. By sharing this training material through local and regional government authorities, Simavi-MKAJI supports institutional capacity to facilitate the tools for trainings on these subjects. The envisioned audience for the videos are health facility staff and community  health workers. We will  pilot the use of the video’s in order to see how the use of this video tool can contribute to knowledge management, and how it is perceived and adopted opposed to other training materials and tools such as factsheets, posters and manuals. These training videos are an open source and you are welcome to use them freely when finalized. Feel free to contact me any time!​

Contact

Emma Vos, Programme Officer, Simavi-MKAJI | Emma.Vos@simavi.nl