COMMUNITY CORNER:
Handwashing Day
A space designated for your submissions Global
For the first time this October 15th, the Municipal Child Care Centres participated in Global Handwashing Day - an advocacy initiative through The Global Handwashing Partnership. With the current COVID-19 Pandemic's second wave approaching, and with cold and flu season beginning, we felt like this was a wonderful opportunity to keep handwashing at the forefront for families and children.
Our Centres' pedagogy is based on the four foundations of learning, as set out in How Does Learning Happen? Ontario's Pedagogy for the Early Years: Belonging, Well-being, Engagement and Expression. Focusing on Well-being, this addresses the importance of physical and mental health and wellness. It incorporates capacities such as sense of self, self-regulation skills and self-care. Handwashing with soap and water increases child attendance records by reducing the chances of illness to spread, such as diarrhea, pneumonia and COVID-19. Handwashing is a lifelong requirement for a healthy future.
Good handwashing can prevent disease outbreaks, reduce school absences, and improve healthcare outcomes. Despite these benefits, handwashing with soap is practiced too rarely, and the results are tragic. Every year, 1.4 million children die from diarrhea or pneumonia. Infections cause 15% of newborn deaths. Diarrhea alone leads to millions of lost school days every year. Handwashing with soap is an effective way to prevent these losses. In fact, simple handwashing with soap at critical times—such as after using the toilet or before eating—can reduce the incidence of diarrhea among children under five by nearly half and respiratory infections by approximately 25%. For everyone, handwashing with soap is a simple, but critical, way to remove barriers to education and productivity.
We ran a weeklong contactless campaign for the event entitled “I Keep My Community Safe, I Wash My Hands” October 12 -16th, 2020, partnered with Waninawakang Aboriginal Head Start and the kindergarten classes at Sioux Mountain School. During this time, we held two contests for children – a colouring contest, and a drawing contest, and handed out prizes of puzzles, soaps, sanitizers, soap makers, books and stuffies to the six winners! We also handed out arrow decals that were placed on the floor, from the toilet to the sinks. These are environmental cues to help children remember to wash their hands after using the toilet/a diaper change. Our objective was to reinforce the already existing behaviour change campaigns throughout our region through these activities and messaging, with a goal of increasing the duration of handwashing as well as more consistent handwashing in the young children of our communities.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank the following businesses for their generous donations for prizes and supplies:
- Fresh Market Foods
- Signatures Signs and
- Stitchery
- Giant Tiger
- Red Apple
- Waninawakang Aboriginal Head Start
We would also like thank the Municipality of Sioux Lookout for sharing our messages and pictures on handwashing through the Municipality’s Facebook and Twitter pages during our campaign week.
And a BIG thank you to all the children and educators for their participation!
Kristin Wray, RECE
Resource Consultant
Biidaaban Children’s Centre
Day Care Department
The Corporation of the Municipality of Sioux Lookout
Rikki Burke, RECE
Site Supervisor/ Resource Consultant
Sioux Mountain Children’s Centre
Day Care Department
The Corporation of the Municipality of Sioux Lookout