WASH in Schools in Ethiopia SUMMARY 
The schools lack WASH facilities, as well as menstrual hygiene services. This has an effect on the school participation, especially amongst girls. Without WASH facilities in school, the participation rate is low and without education, girls cannot become financially independent and are more prone to child marriage or teen pregnancy. The project wants to achieve good school WASH facilities and higher school participation rate, especially for girls. Sustainability is ensured by strengthening gender equality, improving capacity and governance within schools, and local administration.
The two years project runs at 6 primary schools in 6 communities of Bahir Dar Zuria district, Amhara National Regional State, in 2018 and 2019. Construction and capacity building with specific  training are the main mechanisms. Monitoring and field level supervision by project staff will be ensured to work actively on the efficiency, sense of ownership and sustainability of the project. Except Wojita primary school, the schools do not have any water facility. This has created hygiene and sanitation problems which lead to health problems, leading the students to have long and repeated absenteeism from school. For girls this aggravates when menstruating.
Missing classes has also negative impact on academic results which reduces the girls’ school attendance and hence forcing them to drop out from formal education. Based on the data found from the school administration, during the last 2 months of 2017 academic year, 66 students have dropped out due to lack of water facilities. 
None of the selected intervention schools have sex disaggregated latrines. Most of the students of both sexes defecate in open spaces in the bushes. Girls are not expected to be seen whilst using latrines during day time and also fear of the boys. The risk for Gender Based Violence is high when Open Defecation is practiced and leads as well to unwanted or early pregnancy and drop out from school and early marriage.
Studies have found that 25% of girls in Ethiopia do not use any MHM products to manage their periods and isolate themselves during menstruation, because of cultural embarrassment. 
The preliminary survey has also indicated that most community members do not know about water treatment before use. There is an awareness gap on the practice of handwashing, i.e., before eating, food preparation, feeding child, after defecation, after cleaning baby faeces. The project is carried out because of lack of WASH facilities in schools, especially lack of menstrual hygiene services. Therefore school participation rate is low, especially amongst girls. Without schooling, girls cannot become financially independent and are more prone to child marriage or teen pregnancy. The project wants to achieve good school WASH facilities and higher school participation rate, especially for girls. Bahir Dar Zuria district is one of the nine districts in West Gojjam zone, ANRS. It is a fully rural oriented place, with few peri-urban areas.  It is located around Bahir Dar, the capital city of Amhara region and has the Blue Nile fall river.    
After consultation with the District Education Office, Plan selected the following six schools for project intervention: Yigodi Primary School, Lata Primary School, Wonjita Primary School, Chenta Primary School, Tigeza Primary School, Wondata Primary School. 
The schools were selected based on the fact that they are located in Plan International Ethiopia’s sponsorship communities. Secondly, the schools were denying the children’s right to safe water, improved latrines and clean environment.  Children were not practicing hand washing due to infrastructural, management and awareness problems. Girls don’t keep their hygiene during menstruation due to unavailability of separate sanitary pad changing rooms and girls’ friendly separate latrines.
According to the baseline study conducted by Plan, a number of water schemes in the schools are not functioning well. Operation and maintenance problems are common. This is mainly due to lack of budget for the water schemes, poor awareness and mismanagement. There are no strong water points’ management practices, despite the availability of WASH committees. The project targets directly 6452 students and 168 Teachers
Boys –                     3419
Girls –                      3033
Male teachers –    93
Female teachers – 75
Indirectly, the project will benefit the whole Kebeles population in which the target schools are located; through awareness raising mechanisms, IEC/BCC material production and distribution and MHM training and sanitary pad production business. Therefore, 43,846 community members (21,453 female and 22,393 male) will be indirectly addressed by this initiative. Three outcomes are desired under WASH activities.
Under Outcome one, the project will construct/rehabilitate water supply schemes for drinking, hand washing, and menstrual hygiene (1 per school). Construction/rehabilitation of gender separated VIP latrine for both girls and boys (two per school, each with five cubicles) will also be done through the project. Alongside provision and installing hand washing facilities including construction of support structures, water containers, pipes and fittings (one station per block) will be done. Bearing the need for sanitary pad changing room, under the project there will be construction/ rehabilitation of rest room for adolescent girls (1 per school). The project will make sure of procurement and distribution of water treatment chemicals (powder chlorine) to target schools. In order to enhance waste management practice of the school community, the project will support for excavating solid waste collection pit. 

Under outcome two, provision of awareness raising training on menstrual hygiene management, and taboos, myths and facts about menstruation to boys, girls, teachers, and parents will be done to bring attitudinal and behavioral change. Facilitating meetings, campaigns and provision of support to adolescent girls, boys, teachers, and parents is also planned to deal about menstruation hygiene management. Through facilitating dialogue forums and peer to peer education among girls about menstruation and menstrual hygiene management, the project will try to address the awareness gap. It will also be complemented by development and distribution of boys and girls puberty booklets, leaflets, and posters. Boys and girls will be trained on gender equality to enable them become supportive of the girls in the schools. One activity will be incorporated to facilitate events to bring role models to share their experiences together with the clubs using drama/theatre.
The project will also purchase and distribute essential MHM facilities, kits and materials for adolescent girls (like bed, chair, shelf, emergency sanitary pads, waste collection buckets, water storage buckets and soaps) at target schools. Establishing and strengthening adolescent girls association at Woreda level will be done. The will also be provided start-up fund and materials for the production of sanitary pads business so that there will be a continuous support of sanitary pads which will be availed in the constructed sanitary pad changing rooms. This includes the purchase and provision of sewing machines and accessories, clothes, sewing thread, chair, and providing training about business skill, production and management of low cost, culturally acceptable and affordable sanitary pads in schools.

Under outcome three, WASH clubs and WASHCos will be established/strengthened through provision of training on practical plumbing, operation and maintenances of schemes. They will be technically supported so that they can manage the already constructed/rehabilitated water schemes.  They will also be supported with pipe toolkits and spare parts for minor replacements. Stakeholders visit and monitoring will also be done through participating students, teachers, and parents at target schools which in turn will enable to influence, lobby and gain their buy-in for sustainability and scalability after the project phase out. The purpose of outcome three is beyond managing the water points during the implementation period but extends to ensuring sustainability.

Description of gender activities including MHM
During the project designing phase, Plan has conducted preliminary assessment through involving the girls,  boys and teachers in separate groups as well as jointly together. Hence, the concerns, challenges, mitigation mechanisms were taken and the project activities were designed to address their needs.
With regards to cleaning the latrines, the project has discussed with the girls and boys and has planned to establish a committee who is responsible to clean, follow up and report to the school administration. In the committee both boys and girls will be involved. However to reduce burdens on the girls, the project strategically will technically support to develop bylaws and assign responsibilities amongst the members. The project will also ensure that 50% of the membership in the schools club filled by girls and the girls will be allowed to take the management role as well. Teacher guardians and school principals will strategically support for the girls to get the leadership positions and entertain their decisive role with in the clubs.
To this end, the project has designed activities for gender sensitive programing such as gender equality training for boys and girls, construction of segregated VIP latrines, construction of MHM rooms, purchase and distribute MHM facilities and material supply and support girls to enter into business. In this way the girls’ capacity will be built and their needs will be addressed. The cl F WASHCos, care takers, PTAs, clubs will contribute money for maintenance. Water supply sources are constructed without any additional energy source, so this saves money. Constructed latrines are monitored by national school WASH guidelines, so the operational cost of the scheme is almost null. Probably small repairs and the purchase of parts of the hand pump, and latrine parts will be neccessary. Funds will be available for small repairs to the schemes. Caretakers will receive payment for their support in the project from these collected or allocated funds, which ensures their consistent support.
I National policies and Local government practical implementation guidelines will be key in ensuring the long-term success of this project. The WASH Implementation Framework (WIF) has also clearly indicated the role and responsibilities of different government line offices, NGOs, and communities. 
E The WASH infrastructure constructed under this project will be climate resilient. 
T The design of the water supply schemes will be suitable to children. The project will address operational and maintenance issues, spare parts availability and affordability and arrange support mechanisms available in cases when major rehabilitation or maintenance needs arise. WASHCos and caretakers will be involved from the beginning and the necessary capacity building trainings will be organized. 
S Community mobilization and active participation were used for input. The need was identified, activities designed, and type of the scheme decided. Meetings will be organized regularly to create awareness, manage and maintain the schemes. Lastly the community is mobilized for social ownership, care taking,girl/female participation, entertaining leadership and also mainstreaming gender equality.