This project, “School Health Education,” has the perfect answer. School health programs include the development of student health records and are intended to create awareness about personal health and hygiene behavior and practices among adolescent boys and girls studying in schools and set up facilities and systems to encourage them to undertake actions toward sustainable change.
The project will involve teachers as trainers and guide them to form a School Health Club (SHC) in each school, conduct education, awareness, and action project through the SHCs, and engagement of employees. This sample proposal is a plan to reach out and engage authorities, parents, school administration, and support staff at the project schools to sustain the change.
BACKGROUND
Lucknow is the eleventh most populous and the capital city of Uttar Pradesh, India. The population of Lucknow city is over 2.8 million of which 52% are males and 48% are females. As per the 2011 Indian census, Children aged below 15 years constitute 25% of Lucknow’s population. The average literacy rate in Lucknow district is 81.91 % of which males and females are 85.60 % and 77.93 % literate, respectively. Early marriage is still the norm amongst the poor and 5 % of girls and 9% of boys are married before the legal age. About 89 % of children aged 6 to 17 years enroll in schools, of which 9 % drop out.
One of the reasons for school drop-out, particularly among girls, soon after reaching puberty is the lack of basic facilities like clean and separate toilets for boys and girls. Access to safe and potable water is a big concern. Knowledge about basic personal health and hygiene, proper behavior and practices, including menstrual health and hygiene amongst children, is very poor. Health conditions are askance as 12% to 15% of children were found to be suffering from diarrhea & acute respiratory infection, respectively.
In addition to personal health and hygiene, nutritional deficiencies and childhood illness among children aged 6 to 18 years needs immediate intervention. Though there are local health centers available, but their intervention with schools is limited, which needs to be facilitated for better managing such illnesses.
PROJECT PROPOSAL
School Health Education (SHE) program is intended to create awareness about personal health and hygiene- behavior and practices, among adolescent boys and girls studying in 15 state government/corporation-run schools’ in Lucknow and set up facilities and systems to encourage them to undertake actions towards sustainable change.
The program will involve teachers as trainers and guide them to form a School Health Club (SHC) in each school, conduct education, awareness, and action programs through the SHCs, and engagement of XXS employees. We also plan to reach out and engage authorities, parents, school administration and support staff at the project schools to sustain the change.
One of the activities in each school will also be health screening camps. During this, pediatricians will be invited to screen children with childhood illnesses and refer those in need, to government health centers.
Each year program will culminate with an annual experience-sharing meet.
OBJECTIVE
To improve knowledge, attitude, behavior and practices on health and hygiene among children.
Specific objective
- To educate students on personal health & hygiene, practices and behaviors, including Menstrual Hygiene Management (MHM) at schools and home.
- To create awareness on the importance of proper health and hygiene practices and behavior
- To renovate/ build facilities and set up systems in schools required for maintaining proper health and hygiene
- To establish, mentor and sustain School Health Clubs (SHCs) for healthy school environments, healthy students, and communities.
- To help reduce school absenteeism
STRATEGY
Liaison with the relevant government department/ education office and get prior approval for conducting the program in 15 schools, followed by letter of agreement from the respective schools. Conduct a baseline study to assess the knowledge, attitude, behavior and practices of students, related to personal health and hygiene including menstrual hygiene. Train Teachers and form a School Health Club (SHC) in each school. These clubs to conduct activities and undertake actions to promote behaviour and practices for improved health and hygiene among children. Engage parents, other teachers, school administration and support staff to maintain proper health and hygiene. Engage Government health centres to conduct health screening camps and identify any major illness among children. An annual experience sharing meet will be organised to share and learn from each other experiences and help sustain the change. Engage employees of ABC in all activities. Continue with SHC activities in Year-2 and conduct the final evaluation.
THEORY OF CHANGE
Poor school attendance and academic performance are related to poor health indicators of students. And poor health is related to improper health and hygiene, practices, and behavior. Inadequate or lack of personal hygiene facilities like separate bathrooms/ toilets, dustbins for waste disposals, hand washing facilities, etc, further discourages to adopt proper hygiene practices.
Peer-to-peer learning is always high and sustainable. Thus, the School Health Clubs with active students as members, facilitated by trained teachers, would conduct awareness programmes on personal health and hygiene including MHM among the peers. Improper menstrual hygiene is one of the major contributors of absenteeism and thus, would be tackled carefully. In addition, childhood illnesses would also be focussed and referred for cure to help improve the academic performance of children. Parents, other teachers, school administration and support staff would also be involved to help maintain the actions focussed.
The programme majorly focusses on education, awareness, capacity building and systemic changes, which are very essential for any sustainable change.
Finally, an important aspect of the programme is experiential learning. Many of the problems can be solved through adapting/ replicating based on learnings of others. Each school is different as it has a different micro-environment. But learning process can be replicated or adapted, based on how someone else has solved a similar problem. An annual meet will be organised for this purpose and to bring all stakeholders- parents, teachers, government, and school administration, to ensure a sustainable change.
Programme is conducted for 2 years for measurable impacts.
ACTIVITIES
- Empanelment of Schools: Meeting with the relevant government department/ education office to get their approval on the project. In consultation with them, identify 15 schools where the programme would be conducted. Sign an MOU with the department. Request the department to send out letters to the schools. Visit schools and meet the School Principal, update them about the programme and MOU and seek their support for the programme. Request the school to send a letter of willingness to join the programme.
- Baseline Survey: It will be done to understand the socio-economic, health and educational status of children studying in the project schools before SHE intervention.
- Recruitment of Project staff: The project staff will be hired locally.
- Training of Project Team: The project team will be inducted and trained on project activities.
- Development of SHE documents: Module for Training of Teachers, Standard Operating Procedure Manuals for various processes, Guide book on SHC and other Information Education and Communication materials will be developed and printed.
- Selection of Teachers as SHC Teachers: From each school, select 2 teachers. Reason for selecting 2 teachers is that, if one of them is not available/ on leave, other can continue conducting the program.
- Training of Teachers as SHE Coordinators: Conduct a 3-day Training of Teachers on SHC activities and their role in SHC.
- Formation of School Health Clubs (SHCs): Facilitate formation of SHC in each school through announcement about such club in their respective schools, identification/ selection of students as SHC members and launch of SHC including selection/ election of officer bearers. Parents of the students joining as a member will be informed about this engagement and their consent on the same is taken for smooth functioning of the club.
- Scheduling Club Meeting: Finalise a day and time of the week for conducting the club meeting. Meeting would be approximately of 45 mins. It can be done either before or after the school on a particular day or any other option suggested by the school principal.
- Orientation of SHC Members: During few initial SHC meetings, the SHC members would be oriented to the subject- personal health and hygiene, practices and behaviour, by their respective SHC teacher coordinators.
- Education and Awareness activities: Education and Awareness activities on personal health and hygiene, behaviour and practices will be conducted by SHC members for the rest of the school. Activities like developing and displaying posters, demonstrations, competitions, interaction with experts, etc will be conducted for rest of the school students. Peer-to-peer interaction, particularly on taboos associated with Menstruation and Menstrual Hygiene Management (MHM) will also be conducted.
- Engaging Parents, other teachers, school administration and support staff: SHC members will also conduct activities engaging parents, other teachers, school administration and support staff of the school, on personal health and hygiene and seek their support. Reinforcing behaviour and practices, focussed through SHC will be emphasized.
- Health screening camps: Health Screening Camps engaging paediatricians and other medical team from neighbourhood government health centres will be conducted for early detection and referral of the cases to government health centres, after clinical evaluation of children for nutritional deficiencies and childhood illnesses.
- Actions by SHC Members: Actions on renovation/ building of school facilities and services and setting up of systems required for maintaining proper health and hygiene will be facilitated by SHC Members. Needs will be identified and presented to the school management/ authorities and their approval and support for its implementation will be requested.
- Engagement with employees of HCL foundation: Employees of HCLF employees will be engaged with SHC’s activities in various schools.
- Publicity: The visibility of SHE will be ensured through publishing impact stories in news bulletin, social media and other internal and external communications.
- Monitoring and evaluation: The data collection tools, weekly / monthly / quarterly / half-yearly reporting formats will be developed and used to monitor the progress against the Baseline and as per the Plan of Action. The reports will be generated and will be shared with HCL foundation as per agreed frequency.
- An Annual Experience Sharing Meeting: An annual interschool experience sharing meeting will conducted by the SHC members. The meet will comprise of competitions, interactions, project presentations and an exhibition. All stakeholders including parents, teachers from all schools, government representatives and school administration will also be invited to the meet, with the purpose to showcase achievements and their seek support for future.
After Year-1, teachers may need to add few other members, as some of the members would have graduated/ left the school. Orient the new members and continue with the SHC activities.
