Inspiring youth in health and environmental management

Improving health status of people through proper disposal and management of used baby diapers in public locations. 

This initiative we are solving the problem of poor disposal of used baby diapers by provision proper ways of disposing them in the society. 

In Malawi like any other nations across the globe, the use of baby diapers is more common and it is used in almost all parts of the country. 

As a result of this development, many people and women in particular in our various communities are mismanaging proper ways of disposing these used baby diapers where they get scattered in public roads, bare grounds and residential areas a situation which fuels waterborn diseases such as diarrhea, cholera as well as dysentery to spread rapidly and it affects many people's life socially and economically around disposed areas and surrounding communities. 

During rainy season, all disposed diapers are carried away by running waters which dispose them in rivers and shallow wells a situation which contaminate the water which people use for domestic purposes. 

There're several factors which leads to this behavior among our women in our society including luck of proper and clear information on used baby diapers disposal and it's impact to human health as well as environment at large, negligence and luck of government policies to guide on the same. 

The solutions to this problem is to sort it from the root causes by coordinating with community leadership structures and other government stakeholders such as community nurses as well as disease control and surveillance assistants by conducting intensive health awareness sessions through face on meetings, media platforms and arts to community members on impact of poor disposal of used diapers to human health and well-being and environment as well. 

In addition, with the support from community leadership we wil help communities to formulate deliberate policies of allowing all community member households to have a pit latrine for safe dispose of used baby diapers and that anyone found throwing diapers unnecessarily should either pay a small fine aimed at complitely eradicating the tendency of poor disposal of diapers in all areas. 

This initiative will directly and indirectly benefit and improve health living status of almost all community members at large and it will help to conserve environment through reduction of pollution in all targeted areas. 

With this solutions, we aim to create a society where youth and community members are given full potential to lead in controlling waterborne related diseases hence enhancing good health among citizens while in other hand it will help to utilize their resources to help them improve their health living to meet their daily human needs. 

First and foremost our team is well organized, desplined, experienced and dedicated youth who are passionate in working with rural community members in various transformative initiatives that expands access to quality education, healthcare services and enhance social and economic progress among marginalized groups at all levels in the society. 

In addition, we already run an environmental management and forest conservation initiative folum where we campaign to conserve environment through construction of fire breaks, planting trees and protecting already existing trees through our enforcement team and we deliberately formulated laws with the support from area development committees (ADCs) which guide us all to protect and conserve natural resources accordingly. 

It is through in this experience where we have passion to continue serving our communities in areas of enhancing good health among people of different backgrounds in rural set up through provision of awareness campaigns on proper disposal of used baby diapers aimed at preventing diseases and promote good health in rural communities. 

Currently we have already conducted a research randomly in 5 different locations where the findings clearly shows that out of 10 households, 8 of them does not have pit latrine for safe disposal of used diapers. This means that 80% of households in different residential areas poorly dispose used baby diapers in public roads and other open spaces. 

Going forward, we have engaged community leadership structure authorities to map constructive way forward thus sensetizing members at large on impact of this behavior to human health and environmental as well. 

With this solutions of mobilising community members to have pit-latrine at their houses will help to end the tendency of disposing used diapers unnecessary in public spaces and enhance sanitation as well as reduction of pollution on environment and its inhabitants. 

This will directly enhance and improve health living of people through reduction of diseases that comes as a result of the same. 

Our goals through this initiative is to promote sanitation and hygiene by making sure that all used baby diapers are not found in open spaces and are disposed in a right way so that we eliminate diseases that comes as a result of poor disposal of it in open spaces. 

We will achieve this by team work, hard work as well as co-ordination with other stakeholders such as government through the ministry of health by providing awareness campaigns, sensetization meetings and formulation of community policies that will provide guidance on disposing used diapers in our respective locations. 

This initiative will be promoted by the use of social media platforms such as facebook to reach out to many people as possible. 

This year we are serving about 2303 people from 2 villages. By next year we are planning to extend to reach out to 5 villages where we hope to serve about 7000 people in total roughly. 

The main challenge we experience is financial capacity for us to effectively implement various activities such as face on meetings, provision of health awareness campaign, publications and transport cost among others.

In addition, we also face technical and cultural backgrounds difficulties of moving from one area to the another to meet participants. 

We have no partner organizations so far. 

We provide services by voluntarily cleaning wasted used baby diapers in public areas and train community members at large on safe ways of disposing used baby diapers.

For sustainability of the initiative we run agribusiness activities where we get some little funds which helped us to run the initiative.