On 7 April 2020, Tropical Cyclone (TC) Harold caused major infrastructure damage to 43% (128/298) of
schools and 47% (164/349) of ECCE (early childhood care and education) centres in Vanuatu’s Sanma,
Malampa and Penama provinces1. Pentecost, in Penama province, was among the hardest hit with all of
the 23 schools in central and southern zones reported as majorly damaged. Along with efforts to
rehabilitate school WASH infrastructure to ensure continuity of education service (as some schools with
temporary WASH services may close down) Ministry of Education and Training (MoET) worked with
Ministry of Health (MoH) and Department of Water Resources (DoWR) to run a week-long School WASH
Construction Workshop. In total, 125 facilitators and participants attended the workshop, including school
maintenance personnel and both provincial and national education, health and water officers. The
workshop was a first for Vanuatu. With pre-cyclone data indicating an overall low standard of WinS
infrastructure and practice in Vanuatu, the workshop targeted the knowledge, quality and compliance gap
on WASH infrastructure among school communities, whilst also ensuring expeditious post-cyclone
rehabilitation. It was predominantly hands-on and focused on learning and trialing construction of a
variety of school WASH facilities as per recently developed national standards and guidelines. Four
schools that were severely damaged by TC Harold hosted the workshop and received major WASH
infrastructure upgrades throughout. The workshop proved a great success in knowledge sharing and
capacity building in an emergency setting, while establishing and strengthening relationships among
school, provincial and national-level WinS stakeholders. The approach could be replicated, adapted and
applied to a variety of sectors and settings within and beyond Vanuatu to magnify change and capacity
building results.

Bibliographic information

J. Ward, E. Rand (UNICEF Vanuatu) (2022). Building Capacity for Quality WASH in Schools Construction in Vanuatu UNICEF

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