By Local Staff | Splash Ethiopia
Located in a dense neighborhood in the northern area of Addis Ababa, Millennium Secondary and Preparatory School’s open spaces and groves of mature trees give the campus a sense of sanctuary from the busy marketplaces surrounding the school. To help keep kids healthy, the school partnered with Splash to implement an array of upgrades to the water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) environment on campus.
Installing and maintaining WASH infrastructure requires a keen team of contractors, school administrators, designers, and maintenance staff working together to create a responsive system that continuously ensures the school community is getting the best service it can. Tadesse Kayasse works for the school’s maintenance team.
Tadesse helps maintain the WASH systems at Millennium Secondary and Preparatory School. Tadesse’s path to maintenance took many roads: “Before joining this school, I served in the military. Now, I have worked at this school for seven years. First, I was hired as a guard. During that period, I was able to learn electric maintenance in a vocational school. For the past three years, I have been working at the school as a maintenance personnel.” When asked about the favorite part of his job, Tadesse replies, “As a doctor is satisfied when curing a patient, I get satisfaction when I repair any damaged facility in the school compound.”
The transformation at the school has been inspiring for staff, students, and teachers. “Prior to Splash working in this school, there was a situation where there was no water for more than fifteen days. Not only the students, but also the staff struggled to find clean water,” Tadesse explained. “During students’ break time, they tried to go out of the compound in order to find drinking water from the neighborhood. I used to bring three liters of water from my home for students’ consumption.”
To ensure sustainability and long-term operations, training is a core component of Splash’s program. Tadesse shares, “My first experience with Splash was maintenance training. The training was an introduction to the stations and water facilities newly built in the school. In addition, the training consisted of how to keep areas safe and clean and how to sustain the facilities after Splash completes their work at our school. We also got hands-on training that helped us learn about major maintenance applications.”
Tadesse reflects on the transformation he’s seen within the school and amongst students since Splash’s WASH infrastructure has been installed: “We can get clean water from the water filter, the handwashing stations help us keep our hands clean, and the water storage tanks are the keystone. I am excited about all the facilities, and I would like to thank Splash for their work.”
Whether it be teachers, parents, maintenance staff, school leadership, government, or any of the numerous parties required to install and sustain WASH infrastructure, everyone hopes for the same outcome: healthy kids. Thanks to supporters like you and individuals like Tadesse, a safer, healthier environment is now the case for the students at Millennium Secondary and Preparatory School and hundreds of other schools across Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
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