Glossary

Advocacy
A strategy for increasing the level of commitment to improve policies related to hygiene, water, and sanitation in schools programs and the resources available for such programs.

Attitudes
Personal biases, preferences, and subjective assessments that predispose one to act or respond in a predictable manner. Attitudes lead people to like or dislike something, or to consider things good or bad, important or unimportant, worth caring about or not worth caring about.

CBO
Community-based organization.

Child-friendly designs
Technical designs that take into account that facilities will be used by children and adapt the facilities to children's skills and abilities to use them.

Cost recovery
The degree to which the costs of water supply and sanitation services are paid for by the users. Includes two categories of costs: the initial investment costs and the continuous cost of operation and maintenance. The basic cost recovery principle requires that 100 percent of operation and maintenance costs be covered by the users. As for the initial investment costs, users are usually required to pay a part of them, possibly through in-kind contributions made by the parents.

Demand Responsive Approach (DRA)
A project development and management approach in which community members make informed choices about

whether to participate in the project;
which technology and service level options they are willing to pay for (based on the principle that more elaborate systems cost more);
when and how services are delivered;
how funds are managed and accounted for; and
how services are operated and maintained.

When a DRA is employed, government plays a facilitative role, sets clear national policies and strategies, encourages broad stakeholder consultation, and facilitates capacity building and learning. An enabling environment allows participation by a wide range of providers of goods, services, and technical assistance, including private sector companies and non-government organizations. An adequate flow of information is provided to the community, and procedures are adopted for facilitating collective action and decisionmaking within the community.

Enabling Environment
Attitudes, policies, and practices that stimulate and support effective and efficient functioning of organizations and individuals.

Financial Policy
If inadequate attention is given to cost recovery issues, operations and maintenance are likely to be compromised. Establishing and enforcing effective financial policies is an essential, but often poorly practiced, element of implementing successful demand-responsive approaches. An adequate financial policy is built on these basic principles:

Users should pay for services, since experience shows that commitment of user resources demonstrates the value the service;
Ideally, users should pay the full cost of investment and operation and maintenance costs.

If the government applies a subsidy for service delivery, it should follow these rules:

An explicit per-school subsidy may be the most efficient;
The subsidy should be set below the per-school average for the most basic level of service;
If higher levels of service are demanded, users should pay the incremental costs beyond the basic service level.

Focusing Resources on Effective School Health (FRESH)
FRESH was developed by a partnership of UNESCO, UNICEF, WHO, and the World Bank and launched at the World Education Forum in April 2000. The FRESH framework is the starting point for developing an effective school health hygiene and nutrition program in a more child friendly and health promoting school. The aim is to focus on interventions that are feasible to implement even in the most resource-poor schools. The core framework has four components that should be made available in all schools:

Development of health-related school policies;
Provision of safe water and adequate sanitation in all schools;
Provision of skills-based health education;
Provision of health and nutrition services, including treatment of micronutrient deficiency, anemia and deworming.

Gender
Concerns roles and relationships of women and men, including how they cooperate and share work, make decisions, and exercise control in projects and programs. Projects must identify and address these differences and interrelationships to ensure that both men and women have the resources they require for their development.

Helminth Infections
Intestinal worm infections.

Hygiene Promotion
A planned approach that identifies environmental and health problems caused by poor sanitation and subsequently changes behavior among students and in the community by encouraging the widespread adoption of safe hygiene practices. It is a long-term process and should form part of the general work program of Ministries of Education and Health.

Informed Choice
Choice that is based on a full understanding of the costs and benefits of all available options. To test the prevalence of informed choice in decisionmaking, ask the following questions:

Who decides what service level the school will receive?
How are decisions made (meetings, voting, representatives)?
Are operation and maintenance responsibilities clear and presented to the stakeholders before decisions are made?
Does the project provide qualified assistance to facilitate decisionmaking?
Does the school make an informed choice to participate in the project?

Knowledge
Understanding of a range of information. To impart knowledge, teachers may combine instruction on facts with explanations of how these facts relate to one another. For example, a teacher might describe how water-borne diseases are transmitted and then explain that drinking unsafe water can cause diarrhea.

Life Skills
Abilities for adaptive and positive behavior that enable individuals to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life. In particular, life skills are a group of psychosocial competencies and interpersonal skills that help people make informed decisions, solve problems, think critically and creatively, communicate effectively, build healthy relationships, empathize with others, and cope with and manage their lives in a hygienic, healthy, and productive manner.

Life Skills-based Hygiene Education
An approach to creating and maintaining hygienic lifestyles and conditions through the development of knowledge, attitudes, and especially skills, using a variety of learning experiences, with an emphasis on participatory methods. It should enable a child to make positive decisions and take actions to promote and protect health and hygienic conditions for themselves and for others.

Millennium Development Goals
In September 2000, world leaders at the Millennium Summit agreed on an ambitious agenda for reducing poverty and improving lives. This ambition was formulated in eight Millennium Development Goals. For each goal one or more targets were set, most to be achieved by 2015, using 1990 as a benchmark. Three goals are relevant for hygiene, sanitation, and water in schools: achieve universal primary education, promote gender equality and empower women, and ensure environmental sustainability.

Monitoring and Evaluation
Monitoring is observation of how a project is implemented and operates; it provides timely information for ensuring that progress, quality, and effect of processes and procedures are maintained. Evaluation focuses on whether a project is being implemented as intended, examines how the project operates, and addresses problems in service delivery.

NGO
Non-governmental organization.

Program Communication
The process of identifying, segmenting, and targeting specific groups and audiences with particular strategies, messages, or training programs; it involves reaching them through various mass media and interpersonal channels, both traditional and non-traditional.

Project Cycle
Systematizes the interactive process between the project and the school, with additional input and support provided by national and local government, parents, community, NGOs, the private sector, and other possible stakeholders.

Parent-Teacher Association (PTA)
Organization that promotes and organizes strong working relationships among parents, teachers, and schools, in support of students.

Quality Standards
Encompass technical design standards and service delivery levels. Technical design standards relate the type and scale of facility with the type and level of demand. For example:

Types of technology or service level for given school populations within a given area
Technical specifications for various technologies and levels of service
Minimum water quality standards for school use
Environmental standards for citing of sanitation, hand wash and water facilities

Service delivery levels may be defined in terms of the output or outcome of the management of a facility. For example: "not more than 3 days per year without service," which in effect may be used as a performance indicator for system managers.

School Hygiene Committee
A working committee for decisionmaking, financial oversight, and management of water supply, sanitation, and hand washing facilities. The committee is also responsible for the supervision of health, hygiene, and sanitation aspects related to water consumption.

SMART Objectives
Objectives that are defined by five characteristics: Specific, Measurable, Available at an acceptable cost, Relevant, and Time-bound. Such objectives also form the basis for a future monitoring and evaluation system.

Social Intermediation
A process that enables school communities to carry out collective action for the selection, implementation, maintenance, and sustainability of hygiene, water supply, and sanitation in schools. It has two objectives: to enable school communities to make informed choices about collective investment decisions, and to provide training that will enable school communities to plan, implement, and manage hygiene, water supply, and sanitation services.

Toilet
All types of technical sanitation solutions, including flush toilets, pour flush toilets, ventilated improved pit (VIP) latrines, pit latrines, etc.

Willingness to Pay
Maximum amount that households state they are willing to pay for a good or service.

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