Emergency Hygiene Promotion

Hygiene promotion (sometimes called “WASH software”) is the foundation of any successful WASH programme. It is a planned, systemic approach to working with communities, enabling people to change behaviour and to use and maintain improved water and sanitation facilities for better health, dignity and wellbeing.

Key components of hygiene promotion in WASH emergencies operations include facilitating the community-led decision making processes and maintaining a close link with WASH technical counterparts, understanding the community and the socio-cultural context related to WASH, behaviour change and communication, listening and acting on feedback, and strengthening accountability through inclusive participation.

Guidelines and tools​

Red Cross Red Crescent Guidelines and tools

IFRC WASH guidelines for hygiene promotion in emergency operations (English)
These guidelines outline a step-by-step process for Red Cross Red Crescent staff and volunteers to plan and implement effective, context appropriate hygiene promotion, without taking shortcuts or delivering ‘hygiene messages’. The guidelines provide National Societies with a standard approach for quality assurance, and an opportunity for more effective training and monitoring.

See below for other languages – Click on any image to download the guideline

En français

Russian

En español

Bahasa Malasyia

Arabic

Khmer

Thai

Bengali

Step-by-step resources and relevant documents
Download the tools (in Microsoft Word) below for each step of the project cycle – adapt, translate, use, improve.

Assessment​

Planning​

Implementation

Monitoring, evaluation & learning

External Guidelines and Tools

Compendium of hygiene promotion in emergencies website

This compendium is a comprehensive and systematic compilation of the most relevant sector-reviewed components, tools, methods and approaches to design and implement successful hygiene promotion (HP) and behavior change interventions. It is applicable to all critical hygiene behaviors across all response phases.

Learning resources

Advocacy and communication material​

To include resources on this page, or for more information on IFRC initiatives please contact: Alexandra Machado or wash.geneva@ifrc.org