Engagement Lab Visits Ghana for “Handwashing With Ananse” Training

Some 12,000 Ghanaian children die each year from diseases that could be prevented by hand-washing with soap, according to the Child Health Epidemiology Reference Group using data from the Ghana Health Service and the WHO. Many of these illnesses, such as cholera and other diarrhoeal diseases, are likely to worsen with a changing climate.

To address this problem, UNICEF, The Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre and the Engagement Lab at Emerson College have cooperated with the Ghana Education Service, the Ghana Red Cross, Right To Play Ghana and over 600 Ghanaian primary school children to design and develop “Handwashing with Ananse”. Handwashing with Ananse uses traditional Ghanaian storytelling, traditional song and dance, and traditional games to create a highly playful and interactive way to get children to wash their hands with soap and water. Specifically it teaches children Why, How, and When to wash their hands.

From March 9th-11th March 2016, UNICEF Ghana hosted a second Master Training to begin to train partners in how to use Handwashing with Ananse in schools throughout Ghana. The three days intensive training took place in Akosombo, southern Ghana and was attended by 28 participants.

The goal of the workshop was to train partners to become Master Trainers so that they can take Handwashing With Ananse back to their organizations and do step down trainings with teachers and civil society members who will then take the game into schools. Participants spent each morning working with Master Trainers to learn the stories, songs, dances and games and then traveled to local schools in the afternoons to practice implementing them.

Handwashing with Ananse will now begin a limited roll out in some primary schools and it will undergo a rigorous measurement and evaluation (M&E). The M&E will test whether Handwashing with Ananse is effective in teaching children about HWWS, creating attitudinal shifts in children around HWWS, and creating behaviour change in children around HWWS. The study will be composed of 10 treatment and 10 control schools (equal rural and urban) with the treatment schools playing Handwashing with Ananse. Hard measures will be taken in both treatment and control schools to see how much children wash their hands with soap and water over the course of several months.