United Nations Radio

As the International Year of Sanitation comes to a close, there is still a lot to be done. An estimated 2.6 billion people worldwide remain without proper sanitation and as a result are at risk of preventable diseases. One of the objectives of the International Year is to increase awareness of the importance of sanitation and to promote action at all levels, including local communities. An example of a community based advocacy group is ESTAMOS, an NGO based in Mozambique, run by Feliciano dos Santos a musician who uses music to spread the message of sanitation and empowers villagers in Niassa province.
Sandra Guy spoke to Feliciano dos Santos and asked him about the situation in Mozambique.

Feliciano dos Santos

We still have a lot of problems. There is improvement but we can see that so many people lack access to water and sanitation even in the place where I am living, this is a small city but you just go 20 kilometers from this small city you can find people without access to water and sanitation. In Niassa the Province where I am living, we stayed six years without cholera but now we have cholera, so this means that we still have people without lack of access to water and sanitation.

SG: 2008 is the International Year of Sanitation. What are the campaigns or projects that your organization is doing to improve the situation in Mozambique?

FS: We are building latrines and we are building wells for the community and in the year of sanitation we have targets and we are going to use the band to spread more and more this message that people have to understand that sanitation is very important .

SG: What are the main challenges that the organization is facing?

FS: I think the main challenge we have is. You know some people they don't understand that lack of sanitation, lack of access to water is related to the health. Some people they don't understand if they use the bush, they don't understand how from the bush they can get disease. They don't understand how can someone that don't wash their hands can get a disease. So this kind of training, this kind of talking with the people, sometime is hard and when we talk sometime about sanitation, just sanitation , talk about feces, sometime is taboo and this have been a challenge for us because change behavior is not easy it is a process and takes years to talk about this kind of thing. And in now days with HIV we have double challenge because when someone get HIV and don't have access to water and sanitation it is easy to get opportunistic disease.

SG: How do you feel that your organization has been recognized and recently just won the Goldman Prize?

FS: Well, you live far from the world but you do things that can someone recognize you. So that mean that doesn't matter where you are, you make some difference. Many years of work and we didn't realize that we are doing good things - we just do as a normal thing because we just put our effort to help our communities to help ourselves because we need to see our children smiling. Our children to grow up well and it is a good feeling for us.

MUSIC - Feliciano singing

Music

FS: The song says mother listens to me improving latrine is good, is beautiful and is easy to clean .

Music

Presenter:  Feliciano dos Santos uses music to teach people in Mozambique about the importance of sanitation.

Producers: Sandra Guy and Dianne Penn
Duration: 4'09"