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Training for teachers and local authorities on Water and Sanitation Safety Plans in Macedonia - Arachinovo and Vratnica municipalities

Training for teachers and local authorities on Water and Sanitation Safety Plans in Macedonia - Arachinovo and Vratnica municipalities

13.04.2014 |WECF

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Sunday, the 23rd of June, WECF and JHR trained 8 teachers from the 5 target communities on how to accomplish WSSP for their local communities.

At the training participated also 2 experts representing the Institute of Public Health and a consultant from the Ministry of Education in Macedonia, Department for curriculum in primary schools. The training took place in Arachinovo, the Director of the school and the teachers were very kind to host all the participants.

During the training WSSP Compendium, which has been developed by WECF and partners was presented. The approach of WSSP, 10 steps for developing WSSP and practical activities such as doing simple water quality tests and effective washing of the hands were explained. Special attention was paid to monitoring of the water quality, reporting the results, doing risk assessment for water and sanitation facilities and conducting interviews. Throughout the training working groups were set and the discussion was held how to develop WSSP in a community.

A draft version of the WSSP Compendium was presented in the Macedonian language. Next steps will be to finalise it, and translate the Compendium into Albanian, as the schools in Arachinovo, Mojance and Orlance have their curriculum in the Albanian language.

Essential problems from Arachinovo region were raised during the training such as:  old water supply systems in the whole region, high water bills, leakages; the quality of the water is not regularly checked. The sanitation in the whole region is served by septic tanks.

In the region of Vratnica- there is centralized water supply which comes from 2 sources, the upper part of the region which is near Shar Mountain gets the water from the mountain and the lower part which is flat, has its water from underground drilled wells. Water is often yellow in colour when the tap is turned on, then it becomes clearer. The people who live in the region do not have many complaints as they are used to it, but when there are some visitors, they complain about the water quality.
After the conducted WSSP training the next steps will be that the target schools in cooperation with the community, identify and document the problems observed within their water and sanitation systems, discus and develop activities to improve the situation.



For more information about the project, please visit the project webpage:
Romania and Macedonia (FYROM): Water and Sanitation Safety Plans

Contact:
Bistra Mihaylova
Claudia Wendland

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