Health Facilities Rehabilitation in Six Syrian Schools
This news is also available in Arabic.
Stemming from the importance of providing a healthy school environment for students and due to the negative effects of inappropriate WASH facilities, both physically and psychologically, on students, which may cause them to hate or dropout of school; MECC rehabilitated the WASH facilities in six schools in Aleppo, Homs and Rural Damascus Governorates.
4570 students and administrative staff benefited from the rehabilitation. In addition, the activities included the rehabilitation of the WASH infrastructure, water networks maintenance, installation of taps, toilets, doors, tile and ceramic in addition to the installation of water pumps and tanks.
The director of one of the targeted schools, said,” before the rehabilitation, the condition of the WASH facilities was terrible. We were not able to have separate male and female facilities because many toilets were out of service. We were not ready as well for the long water cuts; especially that our water tank was not sufficient to cover the school needs, which worsened the situation. The same applied to the WASH facilities of administrative staff.”
She added,” The school was not able to afford the costs of WASH facilities rehabilitation; especially because we are a public school that is free of charge while parents are poor and unable to help.”
She concluded saying,” We thank MECC for rehabilitating the school. The WASH facilities are much better now. So we have drinking water pipes separated from those used for washing hands. In addition, the number of toilets is now sufficient and we can separate the toilets of boys from those for girls. The water tank provided by MECC helped us solve the water cuts crisis. MECC also rehabilitated the stairs in the schoolyard and they became safe for students to use as they were before consisting of gravel and some asphalt which imposed a risk to students in the school; especially that we are an elementary school.”
