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Safeguard Pakistan School Education
Program Empowering Children with Hygiene Education:
What’s new
about this program?
The Safeguard
School Program connects with kids in a language that
they understand. This program leverages the animated
character Commander Safeguard as the communication
vehicle to make the overall hygiene message relevant,
memorable and engaging for school children. Commander
Safeguard communicates with children in a way that is
novel and exciting
Background
 The Safeguard School Program promotes handwashing
awareness and brings about habit change at the
grassroots level in Pakistan by becoming an ally in
empowering children with health and hygiene education.
The program has its roots in the Karachi Soap Health
Study (2002) led by the Centers for Disease Control,
HOPE and Procter & Gamble. The study showed that
regular handwashing with soap can reduce the incidence
of diarrhea by up to 50 percent.
In Pakistan, where every year more than 250,000
children die from diarrhea, this message of
handwashing becomes a message for survival.
Partnership with Public Sector Health Organizations to
make a difference Health and hygiene programs are
carried out in collaboration with the PMA, the largest
body of doctors across Pakistan, and the IDSP, which
is working to create awareness about
infectious diseases prevention in Pakistan. These
credentialing partners help Safeguard in recruiting
and training doctors and preparing tutorial material
communicated in schools.
Achievements
Safeguard School Program has empowered more than 5
million school children between the ages of 6 and 11
years with hygiene education over the last four years.
To date, this program has
covered more than 10,000 schools in 100 cities of
Pakistan.
Key lessons
Using a memorable, engaging and child-friendly vehicle
– Commander Safeguard – to spread and reinforce health
and hygiene messages is far more effective with
children than standard
health lessons.
Private Sector companies like Procter & Gamble bring
unique consumer understanding and marketing expertise
which, if combined with public sector health
organizations, can lead to new
innovative ways to influence hand wash behavior
change.
The Safeguard
school program has two components:
1. Execution: The objective of the execution component
is to spread and reinforce health and hygiene messages
among children across Pakistan in a memorable and
engaging manner. A typical school program day consists
of Safeguard’s team of qualified doctors
visiting schools, where they conduct hygiene tutorial
sessions. In these tutorials, children are taught
about germs and how they are spread through casual
contact via a germ visualization demo. They are also
taught how to wash their hands properly through a
handwashing demo. This hygiene message is reinforced
through a
Commander Safeguard animated cartoon. Each student is
then given take-home educational material so that they
can continue to learn and monitor their hygiene habits
with their families.
2. Reseeding component: The objectives of the
reseeding component are to ensure that health and
hygiene learning continues long after the Safeguard
team has completed its health tutorial and to help
schools institutionalize this learning through
activities like “Health Days.” A Health Day is the
celebration of health and hygiene organized and led by
the schools themselves. Schools have celebrated Health
Days in various ways, among
them drama competitions, debates, singing
competitions, art galleries, health awareness walks,
and community cleanliness drives – all organized
around the theme of health and hygiene.. |
