Co-WaSH DEFENDERS: A COVID-19 Environmental Policing Squad

Co-WaSH DEFENDERS: A COVID-19 Environmental Policing Squad

APP Foundation
July 7, 2020
Africans Preventing Poverty Foundation and Thinkers Theatre and Empowerment Centre are two non-profit, non-governmental and non-political voluntary organization registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) in the forefront of programs for empowerment, raising developmental potentials and impacting the lives of the youths, women, and children to enable them to lead adequate and self-sustainable life in the society.
Our Mandate is to assist the Nigerian society in reforming, restructuring, and rebuilding Nigerian children, women, and youths towards sustainability and strength of character to close the existing gap, reduce poverty, inequality, and illiteracy via empowerment.
Problem Statement
It has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that curtailing the Coronavirus Pandemic (COVIC -19) entails the observance of established protocols of social distancing, hygiene, and the use of protective tools. Preventing the community spread of the virus has been identified as a major challenge in the race to contain the pandemic. It is therefore imperative for adequate sensitization of the citizenry to ensure the observance of these rules across the board. To observe the protocols, people must be aware of what they are; to be aware they be told about it and efforts must be made to tell those concerned. A lot has been done in the area of this sensitization which has been done majorly via the media and mobile platforms.
The challenge now remains that of reaching those who neither have access to media and mobile platforms and are unable to understand the universal language of English. When the coverage is achieved, there is still the need to enforce compliance with the established protocols. Reaching these categories of persons remains a credible way of drastically reducing the spread of the pandemic. Also, according to WaterAid, about 150 million Nigerians lack access to Handwashing facilities with water and soap.

Justification of the Project
The challenges of ensuring the adequacy and proper coverage of the COVID-19 sensitization of CO-WaSH Defenders, and acronym for COVID-19 Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Defenders, a special purpose environmental policing squad created and specially trained for sensitization, enforcement, and distribution of personal protective equipment.
This has become necessary to ensure adequate information dissemination to the hinterlands and the rural areas to protect the citizens.

Project Goals
The goal of the project is to create an environmental policing squad to be known as CO-WaSH, specially trained and uniformed to:

  • Sensitize the populace of the COVID-19 and ways to prevent the infection and stay safe
  • Enforce compliance to established pandemic protocols
  • Aid in the distribution of the personal protective equipment using purpose-built COVID -19 Kiosk.
  • Provide access to hand-washing facilities with water and soap and sanitizers.

Project Activities
The activities for this project are as follows:

Sensitization and Advocacy Going around the communities to sensitize the people on the existence of COVID-19, how to avoid getting infected and general protocols.
 

Enforcement of Compliance

 Ensuring that the established protocols are strictly adhered to.

 
Purpose-Built COVID-19 Kiosks/booths Positioned in strategic locations within the community to act as the distribution platforms for disposable nose masks, hand gloves, and hand sanitizers. It will also act as stations for hand washing and sanitizing.

Project Benefits

The realizable benefits of the project are classified into short, medium, and long – term periods as follows:

Short Term

 Medium Term

Long -Term
*Immediate spread of information, not the disease.

 

*Faster distribution of protective gear.

 

*Access to handwashing platforms

 

 *Prevention of further spread of the virus

*Improvement in Health and Hygiene

 

 *Stopping the spread of the pandemic

 

*Maintaining a healthy, happy and productive citizenry

 

Budget (36 States and FCT)

Description Unit Price (USD$) Quantity Amount (USD$)
CO-WaSH Defenders Kits et al (12 per Local Govt)  215.79          9,288                  2,004,252.63
Provision for Remunerations (6 months) 789.47          9,288                  7,332,631.58
Provision for Personal Protective Kits (Per Local Govt) 315.79          9,288                  2,933,052.63
Palliatives (Per Local Govt) 1,315.79          9,288                12,221,052.63
Transport. Mobility and Logistics 394.74          9,288                  3,666,315.79
Monitoring, Evaluation, and Follow-up 657.89          9,288                  6,110,526.32
Kiosk Construction and Deployment (25 per Local Govt) 789.47        19,350                15,276,315.79
Training of CO-WaSH Recruits 92.11          9,288                      855,473.68
            50,399,621.05

 

Stemming the community spread of the COVID-19 pandemic must be proactively pursued, and the CO-WaSH Defenders are central to the achievement of the targeted objectives.