Every morning, the students of this school start their day with a song. But it’s not the alphabet song or a nursery rhyme. It’s a catchy tune about scrubbing well with soap and water. As part of the Child-Friendly Schools project, UNICEF installed separate toilets for boys and girls and a clean water pump for washing on the school grounds.
Now the students can put in practice what they have learned through singing.
An estimated 26 percent of the rural population of Myanmar does not have access to modern drinking facilities and many schools have no water facilities whatsoever. The school walls have instructional posters that explain how to properly wash after using the latrine. Myanmar’s rural students can now study in cleaner and healthier schools, and perhaps influence the way their entire community thinks about hygiene.