The Ethiopian Kale Heywet Church Development Commission(EKHCDC) held market based sanitation(MBS) strategic planning and Menstrual Hygiene Health Management learning exchanging workshop with Partners and stakeholders under EKHCDC’s implementing project entitled: – ‘’Women-led WASH for Healthy Homes’’ recently.
On the workshop the international partners and local sanitation product supplier were attended and shared their respective knowledge and experience on the MBS and MHH strategic implementation.
During the workshop opening speech Mr. Tamiru Zeleke (EKHCDC HR and Operation Department Head) said that the Commission has engaged in water and sanitation activities since 1984 targeting different communities in urban and rural areas of the country. The sector provides safe and sufficient drinking water with aiming to improve the health and food security conditions of beneficiary households. Also it trains the beneficiaries on how to manage and maintain their WASH facilities and services for effective and sustainable use of the water sources. Besides this, it addresses the health related issues by undertaking mass education approaches to various region of the country.
Mr. Tamiru extends his gratitude to Global Affairs Canada, and CAWST for their financial support to benefit the vulnerable peoples in the targeted areas. The ‘project is among one of the many project that EKHCDC has been implementing since 2022. It focuses on water and sanitation at school and community level and contributing a total of 81,746 beneficiaries.
Mr. Ziyad Ahmed WASH and Environment Expert delegate from Minister of Health has explained for the workshop participants that still improved sanitation practice in Ethiopia is poor and need more work and stakeholder’s collaboration to address the gap and improve the community knowledge and sanitation practice.
He also appreciated the EKHCDC effort in WASH and Sanitation contribution that will have significant progress in reducing open defection. Considering the slow progress of the basic sanitation coverage, the ministry of health has market based Sanitation initiatives with the aim of ensuring access to standard improved sanitation and hygiene products and services to the end users (community).
Mr. Cherent Birhanu the EKHCDC WASH Unit Head has presented an assessment report on community catalogue preference of a sanitation products. The project is implemented in SNNP regiona of three zones namely: Gurage Zone, Abeshge Woreda, Hadiya Zone Misha Woreda and Kambata Zone, Kachabera Woreda. The project will benefit over 81 thousand peoples During presentation it has been explained that EKHCDC has conducted a research on community preference for different sanitation products using Mwater software technology. From the survey result it revealed that there is huge gap on the sanitation service and utilization of latrine in the targeted communities.
Ato Chernet has extended his gratitude to partners and stakeholders for their participation. He said that the learning exchange among partners and stakeholders and experience sharing on strategic market based sanitation implementation is very important for effective and sustainability of a project implementation.
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