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238 CHAPTER 10 ■ “Safe Water Saves Lives”

burden regions. Fifty women’s associations were established with some 5,000
members trained in the importance of treated water and good hygiene, as well
as in interpersonal communications (IPC) techniques. Sûr’Eau messages were
integrated into other maternal and child health communications as part of a
comprehensive approach to improve overall health in rural areas.
2. School distribution. The Sekoly Sûr’Eau (Sûr’Eau at schools) initiative was
aimed at reaching schoolchildren with sanitation and hygiene messages as
well as providing them with clean drinking water while they were at school.
School-based programs have been found to effectively influence health be-
haviors with results such as children bringing messages of safe water home to
their mothers. Working with NGOs such as Aide et Action, the team launched
this distribution and promotion channel in 160 schools with a target of
reaching more than 300 schools (see Box 10-4).

BOX 10-4 Student Promotional Agents Change Behavior
in Kenya

Designing and implementing behavior change programs in rural areas
provides unique challenges to social marketing programs. Traditional mass
media (television and radio) are often not accessible to rural populations,
while outdoor media such as billboards are only accessible along major
roadways, and printed materials often end up in the hands of illiterate
villagers.
This was the case when PSI Kenya launched PUR (flocculent/
disinfectant) in 2005. To reach rural populations where drinking water was
both turbid and unsafe, PSI partnered with the Ministry of Education and
two local agencies to implement a school-based PUR promotion program.
The idea of the initiative was to use schoolchildren to promote behavior
change in their own households. One local NGO partner experienced in
school-based program development designed and printed behavior change
materials and acquired government approval for distribution. A second
private sector communications partner conducted educational sessions at
schools that included demonstrations of product use and gave three sample
sachets of PUR to each student.
Evaluation of the behavior change intervention found that 95% of
students could recall all of the steps necessary to correctly treat drinking
water. In its first year, the school program reached almost 88,000 students
in 446 schools at a cost of just over US$1.00 per student.