Mass Communication Students Launch Safe Spring Initiative to Promote WASH Awareness in UNILAG

By Adeyinka Adesewa, Mary Omowo, Success Essien, Kolawole Ahmed

Final-year students from the Department of Mass Communication, University of Lagos (UNILAG), have launched a campaign focused on Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) under the Safe Spring Initiative (SSI). As part of the initiative, they held an outdoor awareness event on Monday, July 28.

The event was held across several locations on the UNILAG campus, including faculties, hostels, and restaurants. It involved one-on-one sensitisation, distribution of flyers and hygiene materials, and the display of banners and stickers to promote safe hygiene practices among students and food vendors.

Prior to Monday’s campaign, SSI carried out pre-campaign activities on campus the previous week, which included message testing and gathering responses from members of the university community on hygiene and sanitation issues. Interviews were conducted with volunteers who had experienced food poisoning, and a Google Docs form was circulated among students staying in the school hostels.

Speaking with UNILAG Sun about the findings of the preliminary research, Blessing Famose, the Project Manager for SSI, mentioned that they discovered significant unsanitary practices among members of the university community. “Some vendors don’t wear gloves or even cover their hair,” she said.

To address this issue, during the outdoor campaign on Monday, SSI distributed hand gloves and liquid soap to workers in restaurants across campus, including Mavise, Poppas, Iya Moria, and 2001 at New Hall. According to Famose, giving out these materials would help food vendors across UNILAG “improve their hygiene.”

She also noted a major setback the team encountered during the campaign. She said, “The team faced challenges, including interference from UNILAG’s Quick Response Team for filming without a permit. We weren’t aware of the permit requirement, and that disrupted our shoot. But we later sorted it out.”

Similarly, Peace Chenube, a content writer for SSI, noted other challenges, the most significant being “time constraints.” He added, “We had just about 10 days, more or less, to plan this whole thing. There was no time for us to source funds from sponsors, so we had to raise the money that we used to acquire campaign materials by ourselves. That was a big challenge, but overall we prevailed.”

Commenting on the success of the outdoor campaign, Chenube said, “Today’s event was quite successful. We were able to get all our materials ready. We ensured our messages were clear and executed them properly. We did it well. We were able to educate restaurant owners, students, and members of the university community on sanitation practices they should adopt.”

The Safe Spring Initiative aligns with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG 6), which seeks to improve hygiene education, reduce water pollution, and increase community participation in water and sanitation management.