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Safe Water Campaign (PNG)

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News, Project Updates, Safe Water Campaign (PNG)
November 17, 2020

Our partners, the United Church in Papua New Guinea (UCPNG), have been running a successful behaviour change campaign for many years, teaching thousands of people about the importance of clean water and good hygiene. When the pandemic hit Papua New Guinea, they were ready to expand this work to include COVID-19 awareness and prevention, and they’ve been out in force educating communities about the threats of COVID-19 and the importance of regular hand washing.

With the permission of the PNG Government, over the past six months the UCPNG team (along with volunteer change agents) have:

  • educated 14,500 people on best practice water hygiene and sanitation
  • distributed 687 pamphlets, 2505 posters, six banners and 3840 bars of soap
  • worked with 11 congregations, 14 communities and six schools along the East Cape Coast

A team of three theologians also shared COVID-19 safety messages to help people understand this and other disasters from a theological perspective. One of them was Kerron, a recent Master of Theology graduate of Raronga Theological College. “Every home now is implementing the tippy tap approach to wash hands in the villages we visited, church seats are marked a metre apart and masks are sewn by women to help with schools and public,” said Kerron.

Thank you for supporting the work of our partners UCPNG and helping them make a huge impact in their communities!

 

The United Church in PNG Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Project is supported by the Australian Government through the Australian NGO Cooperation Program (ANCP).

 

 

 

 

 

Header image: A Volunteer with UCPNG’s ‘Rait Mama’ behaviour change campaign.

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by
Church Partnership Program (PNG), Project Updates, Safe Water Campaign (PNG)
May 29, 2020

Frequent and proper hand hygiene is one of the most important measures to prevent COVID-19 outbreaks.

Our partners the United Church in Papua New Guinea (UCPNG) are working across 17 communities in Milne Bay province to run COVID-19 awareness sessions and installing handwashing stations with soap, instructional posters and steps so children can reach (see left of pic 1).

Supported by the Australian Government Disaster READY initiative, UCPNG and other PNG church partners will be helping support the immediate needs of almost 40,000 people.

The project also includes the training of community mobilisers/volunteers to drive community engagement activities, working in close coordination with local government authorities and community groups.

Thank you for your support!

Our partners will continue to serve their communities throughout this crisis and beyond.
Donate now to support their work: www.unitingworld.org.au/actnow

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Blogs, Safe Water Campaign (PNG)
June 17, 2019

“It’s our choices that matter in the end. Not wishes, not words, not promises.”

How many choices do you think you might make each day? Researchers suggest it’s about 35,000 choices – 227 relating to food alone.

Little wonder so many of us have choice paralysis! So what guides our decisions? Some are impulsive, some are emotional, some come from rationally weighing up the facts. Too many are just unconscious, routine. We do things because it’s the way we’ve always done them. But as so many people have pointed out, it’s our daily choices that become habit, habit that becomes character and character that becomes our destiny. That means our choices are powerful – even the ones we might not think matter all that much.

We went to a small community in Papua New Guinea to film an interactive video that allows you to make choices revealing what life is like as a young person living with limited options in a developing country. If you haven’t already tried it out, you can find it here: https://unitingworld.org.au/choice

The video highlights that “35,000 choices a day” don’t include most of the world’s poor. In Papua New Guinea, the third most difficult place in the world to access clean water, most people have only one water source – and it’s often dirty enough to kill them. One person dies every minute around the world from complications relating to dirty water. Most of them are children. But faced with little awareness about clean water and sanitation, what real choices are there? Lack of options for handwashing and clean water force people to choose unsafe sources, a lifestyle that can kill.

Papua New Guinea is the third most difficult place in the world to access clean water

We’re training health workers who are changing all that, and your choice to get involved makes a huge difference. When you donate to our water and sanitation work, as many of you already have, you’re supporting communities to gain access to clean water and learn new habits that save lives. It’s such a simple act that makes such a huge difference.

Thank you to everyone who has already made the decision to get involved in this work. Your gifts, combined with funding from the Australian Government,* mean that our partners are excited about the ways we can expand the work to many more communities in Papua New Guinea, West Timor, Bali and Zimbabwe.

Together, through our determined daily choices to be people of generosity and compassion, we’re building a world where people can thrive no matter what their circumstances. Thank you!

*As a partner of the Australian Government, UnitingWorld receives flexible funding under the Australian NGO Cooperation Program (ANCP) each year to implement development and poverty alleviation programs overseas.

Every donation you make to this project will be combined with funding from the Australian Government to reach more people. We have committed to contribute $1 for every $5 we receive from the Australian government. Your donation will allow us to extend our programs.

Pic: Local change agents teach a community about water, sanitation and hygiene in Papua New Guinea.

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News, Safe Water Campaign (PNG)
May 31, 2019

The new interactive video highlights the difficult choices faced by people working to overcome poverty.

The video follows the story of 15-year-old Rani, who lives in a remote costal village in Papua New Guinea. With limited access to reliable water, she must make difficult choices every day that put her health, education and safety at risk.

The interactive video aims to highlight how the restriction of choices in the developing world can be fatal, and how we in Australia can use our own choices to make a difference. Watch it here.

Give the power of choice

You can help communities like Rani’s by giving a gift before June 30.

Thanks to our partnership with the Australian Government, your tax-deductible gift can go up to six times further in saving lives.

As a partner of the Australian Government, UnitingWorld can access funding for certain projects to help us reach more people. In order to receive Australian Aid funding, we are required to contribute $1 for every $5 we can access. That means your gift goes up to six times further!

UnitingWorld is aiming to raise $450,000 this financial year to support our community development projects in Papua New Guinea, West Timor, Bali and Zimbabwe. Help us fund our partners and life-changing projects.

Click here to donate now.

Are you part of a church/community group? Click here to access fundraising resources to help us reach our goal!

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by
Safe Water Campaign (PNG)
December 15, 2017

For two years now, a passionate team in Papua New Guinea has been trialing a new, innovative campaign to raise awareness about health and sanitation and the importance of washing hands with soap. In rural PNG, water and sanitation levels are low, open defecation is common practice, and women and girls and people with disability are particularly vulnerable to water‐borne diseases. Therefore, in the participatory design of the project, handwashing with soap by mothers was selected as the main behaviour change to focus on. Community enablers based within three communities across the province have been trained to conduct a 4‐week campaign in their village. The campaign involves awareness about health and hygiene practices, a call to action, motivational posters emphasising the qualities of a “Rait Mama” and “Rait times” to wash hands, and fun drama activities to reinforce the learning. The campaign promotes behaviour change at the personal, household, community and institutional level. One woman from East Paneati proudly showed us the new handwashing bowl that her husband had made for them both to use. When the announcement was made in church, about everyone having a handwashing facility at their home, she and her husband were immediately on board. “I felt that this thing is very important as I was one of the victims to this diarrhoea once. So, I almost died, anyway, but luckily they rushed me to the hospital. So, it’s important that we have to do this. When she came and told us, we said ‘yes, we must do it’”. The project has also made an effort to include people with disabilities in community decision making, and in the practical training. Josephine Kombul, Behaviour Change Coordinator for the “Rait Mama” campaign, told us that dysentery and water‐borne diseases are decreasing, as reported by the local nurse.