This is the Hy2U
The Hy2U (Hygene to U) campaign is an innovative approach for rapid promotion and acceptance of washing hands in poor rural and urban areas, such as where we recently worked in Ethiopia and Kenya.
The project consist out of a tool for washing hands and a method for its dissemination.
Instead of promoting hygiene by focussing on aspects of health, the project's focus is on comfort, niceness and fun. The project is well aware of the high rate of “child-under-five mortality” being 200/1000 in Ethiopia and 120/1000 in Kenya. But for a common person in Ethiopia or Kenya it is hard to derive motivation for washing hands from the intangible concept of bacterial transmission and infection.
Therefore Demotech focuses on simple evident advantages given by our device for washing hands: comfort, attractive personalized appearance, use of little water, low to zero cost, availability at short notice, as it can be manufactured by local crafts, or would even be fun to make in the context of primary and secondary school education.
The tool for washing hands that we promote is the so called "Hy2u for washing hands“, designed by our Dutch foundation "Demotech, design for self reliance". The Hy2u is in detail described elsewhere in this website and in the website http://www.demotech.org/d-design/designA.php?d=91 . Apart from the above mentioned properties, special about the Hy2U is that it can be made from materials that are to be obtained for free and as the only tool needed, with a sharp cutlass, "Gejera" or "Konchera`" or "panga".
The method of dissemination that we now develop is
the "RoadShow". This can be interpreted literally. The method is "show", the team involved is to show its message along the road at each visit or stop that will be of a duration of only a few days. The educational process is sharply defined to fit existing capabilities and has to be fun to do.
The method Road Show is based on three essential and now available conditions:
• The common need and motivation for washing hands of the people we address.
• An appropriate and attractive tool for washing hands, that answers that need.
• The condition of learning: actual manufacture and use of the tool can be learned fast and easy by all participants. Though the Hy2U is a highly innovative and therefore completely unknown tool, all aspects of use and making are self-evidence and derived from well know ways of doing.
