Training to improve Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) facilities in DRC

The client

DFID and USAID-funded programme Healthy Villages, with the Congolese Ministry of Health and UNICEF.  

The challenge

How to sustain the status as ‘healthy village’ of 1,375 villages previously trained and declared healthy? Recognising that sustaining behavioural change is a long-term challenge?  

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Realising that all WASH facilitators need both technical and soft skills, we applied a holistic approach to WASH training.  It combined capacity building of actors at all levels and empowerment of local communities to lead. MDF played a key role in developing community engagement strategies, new facilitation techniques, and a training curriculum on behavioural change. We've trained 30 provincial facilitators who then trained 400 health support teams in 2,000 villages. Many of those successfully regained their healthy status.

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