Translation into Kiswahili of Healthy Water, Healthy Habits, Healthy People children's activity booklet

How do you say "better health through water education" in Kiswahili? The words may be simple to translate, but the concepts are far from easy. Project WET has been working to translate and localize the Project WET WASH materials to make them applicable and useful to children and teachers in Tanzania.

The project focuses on two regions of Tanzania-Mtwara and Zanzibar. Workshops were completed in each region to allow local educators to provide input about the best ways to customize the existing Project WET WASH materials to make them more appropriate in their regions.

With the newly adapted, translated, published and printed materials in hand, a second round of workshops were held in August 2010 to train approximately 80 educators-including district academic officers and teacher resource center representatives from each region. These educators will return to their home communities and lead further teacher trainings.

Educators in Tanzania were trained to use the WASH materials in workshops in Mtwara and Zanzibar One of the local leaders reported after the training that "even the new participants were so excited, enjoyed and really love the project."

Overall, with the support of USAID, Project WET has printed enough Kiswahili materials to distribute 200 KIDs booklets and 5 Educator's Guides to every primary school and Teacher Resource Center in each region. The materials are expected to be used in more than 900 schools, with the potential to reach approximately 1.3 million students. Baseline WASH data has been collected from both of the regions and if results there are similar to those seen in other African nations using Project WET WASH materials, Tanzanian children will experience better health thanks to water education.