Building sanitary facilities in schools and communities
Building sanitary facilities in schools and communities
Achieving primary education is one of the Millennium Development Goals, but students cannot fully benefit from their education if they are plagued by illness and hunger.
The vast majority of schools in Benin do not yet have toilets, so children have to act out of their needs, between the vermin and the faeces of others, without any privacy. It is unsanitary, unhealthy and unsafe, especially for women.
Good sanitary facilities at school are an important contribution to improving the health of the students, because they reduce the chance of getting an infectious disease transmitted by stool of an infected person.
PlanFutur wants to provide good sanitary facilities at school. Clean toilets reduce the risk of an infectious disease that you can get from stool or dirty water. In this way, we contribute to the health of school-aged children and it encourages children to go to school if they know they can safely go to the toilet.
We wouldn’t be PlanFutur if we didn’t do this sustainably. With the ECOSAN technology we collect the urine in the toilets and use it as a fertilizer in agriculture. A win-win situation!
In addition to schools, we also build ECOSAN toilets in village communities, on markets and for individual use.
It is important that this project is embraced by the local population. That is why we are setting up a program to make people aware of the benefits of the ECOSAN toilets.
In this way they can bring about change within and outside their community. And the participating schools feel extra involved and motivated to continue.
The ECOSAN project contributes to the construction of these sanitary facilities, while creating applications for the use of urine as fertilizer in agriculture.
It includes the following parts:
The ECOSAN toilets are built in schools, communities, markets or for individual uses.
The urine is separated from the faeces directly in the ECOSAN toilet. The completely closed system collects the urine safely and odorlessly.
To completely degrade pathogenic substances in the faeces, it is let to dry, compost or ferment (Terra Preta). This is decided with the local partners.
Key people in the community are trained so that they can guide the process, share their experiences and become ambassadors.
