Singing for sanitation: Teen in rural Nepal teaches her village about water safety

At the Children?s World Water Forum here last week, children from around the globe reported to one another on their water projects. Some of them were shy at first, but over the course of the week they became more and more outspoken. One impressive young person was Shanta Chaudhary, 14, who comes from remote Dhikpur village in the Dang District of Nepal. Shanta, her parents and her seven brothers and sisters belong to the Tharu ethnic group, the indigenous inhabitants of the plains of Nepal. A semi-nomadic people, the Tharus are now being squeezed by the pressures of modernization. Many are working as domestic servants across the country. ?In my community, there is a lot of poverty,? says Shanta. ?My people don?t even own their own land, they till the land of others. But there is a growing awareness of hygiene and health.? Shanta, an eighth grader, is among the new generation of Tharus who are breaking the wall of illiteracy and servitude. She chairs the Sanitation Club at her school, which is benefiting from the UNICEF-supported School Sanitation and Hygiene Education Programme. ?My water project is all about the longevity of the community, in school and the rest of society,? explains Shanta. ?It used to be that only 35 per cent of homes had toilets. Now it?s 70 per cent.? Among other activities, the Sanitation Club organizes demonstrations of the importance of hand-washing with soap and raises awareness, through street dramas and song competitions, to convince village elders of the need to construct toilets. Shanta and her club members use the format of the ?dohori? (duet) songs, popular in Dang, to spread knowledge about sanitation and hygiene to the Tharu population. Thanks to this work, her school now has running water and child-friendly separate toilets for girls and boys. And there are plans to make Dhikpur a model village with respect to water and sanitation and hygiene initiatives in the near future.

At the Children?s World Water Forum here last week, children from around the globe reported to one another on their water projects. Some of them were shy at first, but over the course of the week they became more and more outspoken. One impressive young person was Shanta Chaudhary, 14, who comes from remote Dhikpur village in the Dang District of Nepal. Shanta, her parents and her seven brothers and sisters belong to the Tharu ethnic group, the indigenous inhabitants of the plains of Nepal. A semi-nomadic people, the Tharus are now being squeezed by the pressures of modernization. Many are working as domestic servants across the country. ?In my community, there is a lot of poverty,? says Shanta. ?My people don?t even own their own land, they till the land of others. But there is a growing awareness of hygiene and health.? Shanta, an eighth grader, is among the new generation of Tharus who are breaking the wall of illiteracy and servitude. She chairs the Sanitation Club at her school, which is benefiting from the UNICEF-supported School Sanitation and Hygiene Education Programme. ?My water project is all about the longevity of the community, in school and the rest of society,? explains Shanta. ?It used to be that only 35 per cent of homes had toilets. Now it?s 70 per cent.? Among other activities, the Sanitation Club organizes demonstrations of the importance of hand-washing with soap and raises awareness, through street dramas and song competitions, to convince village elders of the need to construct toilets. Shanta and her club members use the format of the ?dohori? (duet) songs, popular in Dang, to spread knowledge about sanitation and hygiene to the Tharu population. Thanks to this work, her school now has running water and child-friendly separate toilets for girls and boys. And there are plans to make Dhikpur a model village with respect to water and sanitation and hygiene initiatives in the near future.