This Friday it is the 3rd annual Global Handwashing Day. 15 October is the date on which global attention is given to the importance of handwashing with soap. The main two themes for Global Handwashing Day 2010 are children and schools. Please do take a look at the official website . Here, you can get more information on the day and find useful tools and resources to get involved personally in the global handwashing celebrations.

Above: Front page of the new Smart Hygiene Solutions Booklet

Timed to coincide on Friday is the launch of a new Smart Hygiene Solutions Booklet, produced by our partner Netherlands Water Partnership. This aims to assist local community teams in making a deliberate choice for SMART hygiene promotion by offering an overview of the different approaches and tools to encourage good hygiene behaviour. It‚Äôs the latest in the series of SMART booklets ‚Äì like the previous ones (Smart Water, Sanitation, Water Harvesting, Finance and Disinfection Solutions) it’s not written to serve as a manual, but more to provide the reader with useful links for further reading. The booklet’s a joint collaboration between NWP, Unilever, Aqua for All, Plan Nederland, and IRC with contributions from Simavi, AMREF, and Unicef.

I had the chance to talk to Elbrich Spijksma, who works with Aqua for All and is one of the main authors. I shot this video with her in Den Haag on 12 October 2010 (sorry about the noisy traffic).

The booklet can be downloaded for free from the IRC website while hardcopies of the booklet can be bought and ordered with KIT Publishers.

Happy Handwashing Day!

Luuk Diphoorn is Akvo’s project coordinator.