A New Game to Teach Children Essential Hygiene Practices
In 2015 alone, over 10,000 children under five in Ghana died from pneumonia and diarrhoeal diseases ( WHO 2015 ). Therefore, one year ago we set out to develop a serious game that could teach children in Ghana about the importance of handwashing. Handwashing with water and soap (HWWS) is proven to be the most cost effective health intervention…, Why use games to teach handwashing, and how to do it?, Evidence on information campaigns to promote handwashing in other countries has shown that these interventions often lead to higher awareness in the short term but show limited longer term impact in terms of actual behaviour change. A growing body of research suggests that experiential learning through play can be effective in transferring…, The final product – a modular game embedded in local folklore and culture, The development was finalized in April 2016. ‘Handwashing with Ananse’ is now a three-chapter story and game experience centered on the popular Ghanaian folklore character Ananse. He often takes the form of a spider who likes to trick other people. In our game, Ananse has stolen all the knowledge about handwashing and hid it in his pockets. The…, All materials freely available to download, ready for roll-out, The facilitation materials have been made available for free under the Creative Commons 4.0 License. The colourful guidebook, also available as laminated facilitators’ guide from UNICEF Ghana, can be downloaded here (PDF, 5 MB) . We are currently finalizing short tutorial videos and additional resources for facilitators which will be accessible…, An innovative evaluation to assess the game’s effectiveness, ‘Handwashing with Ananse’ will now be subject to a rigorous quasi-experimental evaluation. It will asses the effectiveness of the games in transferring knowledge and leading to increased handwashing behaviour in the medium term. More details will be provided in a separate blog post that describes the innovative sensor technology used in the…
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