How often do you wash your hands?
                                           Before you eat?
                                                   After using the restroom?
                                                             Before preparing food?

When you wash, do you scrub for at least ten seconds with soap and water?
Parents, do you insist that your children follow the same practices?

In 2004, over one thousand individuals were observed in Minnesota State Fair restrooms to document handwashing tendencies. Unfortunately, results were not very positive! Female youths had the highest average observed hand washing rate of the four groups observed (66%), followed by adults males (53%), adult females (50%), and male youths (18%). Hand rinsing was observed at about a three times higher rate in males than in females, while females were more often observed leaving without either hand washing or hand rinsing. A surprising 38% of observed adult females did not perform hand washing or hand rinsing compared to 22% of female youths, 18% of male youths, and 6% of adult males.^‡

Fortunately, in the United States, failing to wash one’s hands rarely leads to life-threatening illness. Our culture has established enough disease blocking practices—customs and technologies that promote safe food preparation (e.g., clean kitchens, refrigerators)—to mitigate the consequences of our occasionally careless hygiene practices. However, this is not the case in developing countries. In many countries, simply failing to wash one’s hands often leads to fatal infection or disease. Thousands of children die every day of preventable diseases because they and others in their community are unaware of the dangers of disease transmission and the simple methods for blocking them.

Hygiene training is a vital component of improved health. Lifewater International utilizes a 'train the trainer' approach in accordance with our vision for community sustainability. Lifewater trains both North American volunteers (field trainers) and local health promoters to teach good hygiene practices to local communities. These trainers equip community members with the knowledge, skills, and materials they need to keep pure their new well and the water they use. Installing safe water sources is more likely to improve the community's health and well-being when community members learn their value in Christ (that every life is a life worth saving), understand disease transmission and blocking techniques, and gain healthly hygiene practices. More than a million children die each year of diarrheal disease.² Improving a community’s water supply generally reduces the incidence of diarrhea by approximately 15 percent. However, when cleaner water is combined with hygienic practices and good sanitation, diarrhea incidences declines by almost two thirds!¹⁵

Lifewater's in-country partner organizations welcome Lifewater's hygiene training. They are acutely aware of the need for improved hygiene in the communities where they work to provide safe water. One of Lifewater’s partners in Ethiopia recently conducted a study of 3,817 households in twenty-nine Ethiopian communities. The study showed that, in a region where one in every six children dies before the age of five (a high percentage of them from diarrheal diseases), only 37 percent of those studied washed their hands adequately and only 18 percent used soap.¹⁶  The report concluded that hygiene training is crucial and should be an important part of their work. Working with such concerned and diligent partners, Lifewater International is saving thousands of lives around the world.