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The first year of SSHD project in Ukraine is successfully finished

Impression of the results of the first year of the 3-year Project Safe Sanitation, Health and Dignity, sponsored by Foundation Ensemble and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and coordinated by WECF,

03.12.2008 | Olga Plekhanova

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constructed school toilet building in Stepovoe

The 3-year Project Safe Sanitation, Health and Dignity, sponsored by Foundation Ensemble and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and coordinated by WECF, is implementing dry urine diverting toilets, wastewater and organic solid waste treatment systems for schools and private households in some 20 villages in 10 regions of the Ukraine: Kyiv, Sevastopol, Feodosia, Yaremche, Ternopil, Mykolayiv, Nizhyn, Artemivsk, Nova Kakhovka and Odessa.

Both of the partners NGO Mama-86 and Black See Women’s Club Odessa took maximum efforts in order to reach the goal of the project for the first year. One school toilet was constructed in the village Stepovoe of Odessa region. Another school toilet in the village Sherbanka is in final phase of construction.

Every school in these small villages is counting 250 school children. Before the project started children had to use old out door pit latrines, that caused a lot of diseases specially in the winter period (much longer in the Ukraine than according to the calendar), when children had to go out by very cold temperature.

Children, their parents and teachers are sure that the situation will change and created sanitation conditions will contribute to health of children and quality of their study. Teachers and school staff are also very much involved into the project: it is very important that every child use the urine dry diversity toilet properly and a new toilet will be maintained for a long time. The next step will be a demonstration garden at both schools where the ecosan products will be applied as fertilizers for plants.

Local villagers and authorities are very enthusiastic about the ecosan system. Due to big interest it was decided to build an additional school toilet in a village Gradanitsy.

The local administration of Razdelnaya District is supporting the project and helping with getting permits for school toilets, providing some building materials (sand and gravel) and paying for a design of school toilet. Due to lack of legislation on ecological sanitation it is specially difficult to collect all necessary permits, that is why the support of the District Council in this issue is very valuable.

Two more toilet in towns Nyzhyn (126 km from Kyiv) and Nova Kahovka in Herson region will be built next year by NGO Mama-86 as the design for both toilets is approved and all necessary permits received. It means the change of sanitation conditions for 150 school children and their teachers. They looking forward for that, because till now the have to visit this old out door pit latrines.

Old toilet in Nyzhyn

The school children also involved in the project. Together with their teachers and trainers they learn how to test water quality and define if it safe to drink it or not. The water problem is very actual in the Ukraine. Very often in rural areas people use water from the wells that were not cleaned for more than 50 years. At the same time the pit latrines are often situated close to the wells and going very deep under the ground up to 3 meter. That causes pollution of the ground water. The project activities of Mama-86 and Black See Women’s Club raised interest of the mass-mediato this issue. During the first year more than 20 articles were published in different regional and national newspapers, several TV program were translated. One of the article in the newspaper Keys in Nova Kakhovka region says: “The water has a memory, it hears us. But we can not understand it”.

Both partnersorganized trainings in 13 villages presenting principles of Urine Dry Diverting Toilets and their advantages, caretaking principles of ecosan as well as possibilities of re-use of ecosan products. After the trainings the most interested and motivated householders were selected for construction household toilets. As a result 16 household toilets were built by Mama- 86 in 7 different region and 5 in Odessa region by Black See Women’s Club.In the regions Yaremche and Feodosia the construction was stopped because of floods. All househodlers are contributing to construction with labour, building materials or money.

In addition to that the work on toilet seat production is started. BSWC is developing a business plan in cooperation with local company Pressmash (www.pessmash.com). To learn more about ecosan principles the company Pressmash delegated its representative Arkady Spivakovsky to participate at the World Water Week in Stockholm in August this year.

There are a lot of plans for the next two years and still a lot of work. But the first year finished succesfully and WECF would like to thank both Ukrainian partner organisations for their great cooperation and all efforts!

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