By Merritt Frey, Executive Director
The School Committee President of Denik Middle School in Zambougou inspects the village’s new hand washing stations — tools in the fight against COVID-19.
All around the world, we have heard the message — wash your hands! We know this is perhaps the most important thing we can all do to keep ourselves safe right now. But what do you do when you do not have running water or easy access to soap?
You get creative with simple tools. For several years now, Mali Rising has provided hand washing stations and hand washing trainings at our schools. Now, more than ever, these tools are key!
This month, we provided eight hand washing stations to four village partners who were in need of stations — Kassela, Zambougou, Niengokoro, and Sanakama. We were VERY careful to deliver these with a minimum of risk to everyone — keeping social distance, limiting our contacts to just 2 villagers, and disinfecting the stations upon delivery. The village agreed to provide soap and place the stations in a location where the whole village good use them during the pandemic.
In addition, we reached out to all of our other partner village schools and asked them to move their school hand washing stations to public locations, if they had not already done so. These tools should not be locked up in closed schools when they could be saving lives in the village!
Thank you to all our hand washing station donors over the years….your donation means now more than ever! Want to be a part of this work? For just $50, you can provide a hand-washing station for a village. Donate here to keep our students healthy.
