"Let’s stop looking for WASH silver bullets*: the solution must come from the people."
This was one of the key messages delivered by Dr Dani Barrington (University of Leeds) and Mr Humpress Harrington (Pacific Adventist University/James Cook University) at the recent Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Futures conference held in Brisbane, Australia early March.
Sharing more than close similarities in their surnames, Dr Barrington and Mr Harrington are both committed to embracing local ways of learning and knowing to inform WASH education and engineering practice.
Dr Barrington and Mr Harrington drew on evidence examined during a recent review of literature about the WASH needs of girls and students with a disability in Pacific island countries and territories (details below). They reported to WASH Futures Conference participants that projects in Pacific schools demonstrate the potential for targeted and locally relevant responses.
Mr Harrington, a Nurse Researcher and Atoifi Health Research Group member from Solomon Islands said, “The thing that resonated most with the audience at our presentation was the idea that solutions must come from the people affected, and that community based participatory research is the way to go about this in the Pacific.”
Dr Barrington, an Australian WASH Engineering Researcher from University of Leeds explained, “Almost all practitioners or researchers attending our presentation were working in the Pacific, and all agreed that we need to make sure that we embrace local cultures when designing WASH programs, and not just try to ‘get around’ them”.
The aim of the presentation was to promote an understanding that WASH practitioners in the Pacific can feel that their knowledge of local ways of getting things done is actually very valuable, perhaps even more so than technical WASH knowledge. Mr Harrington reminds us to encourage those being impacted by poor WASH “to be actively involved in finding and implementing their own workable solutions”.
Indeed, the silver bullet might just be solutions that come from the people.
*‘silver bullet’ refers to an immediate solution to a complicated problem
AUDIO and POWERPOINT PRESENTATION NOW AVAILABLE: http://www.atoifiresearch.org.sb/node/181
Story by: Michelle Redman-MacLaren
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Photo: Dani Barrington and Humpress Harrington presenting at WASH Futures; Photo credit: Elizabeth Gumbaketi via @egumbaketi
Work detailed in the presentation is elaborated on in: Redman-MacLaren, M., Barrington, D.J., Harrington, H., Cram, D., Selep, J., MacLaren, D. ‘Water, sanitation and hygiene in schools to promote girls' health and education in Pacific Island countries: A systematic scoping review.’ Journal of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene for Development, (in review).
Thank you to partners: James Cook University, University of Leeds, Pacific Adventist University, Adventist Development and Relief Agency, World Vision Papua New Guinea and CQUniversity.
For more information about this story, please email:
• Michelle Redman-MacLaren michelle.maclaren@jcu.edu.au / @shelmaclaren
• Dani Barrington D.J.Barrington@leeds.ac.uk / @dani_barrington
