WASH

Water, Sanitation, Hygiene

Small moments in daily life can have a profound effect on health and wellbeing: washing hands, using a latrine, drinking safe water, and keeping food and surroundings hygienic.

But information alone does not always change habits … especially when the subject is something people would rather not talk about.

No Strings uses puppetry, humour and participation to make invisible risks visible and everyday hygiene approachable. Children can laugh, question, practice and share what they learn.

Making the Invisible Visible

Long before the poop emoji, No Strings came up with Mr Poop, the puppet with a big personality and a serious health message.

Mr Poop gets on your hands in tiny traces whenever you pay a ‘long call’. Then, through touching, eating, etc, he can eventually end up in your mouth. Or someone else’s poop will. Disgusting!! But that, of course, is the point.

Disgust, humour and play make invisible risks feel real, while giving children a way to talk openly about habits that might otherwise be ignored.

Our WASH programmes support handwashing with soap, safe water, safe latrine use and everyday hygiene routines through films such as Time to WASH, The Amazing Machine and Live from the Latrine. Please scroll down for clips.

For related work, see our programmes on Malaria, Nutrition and HIV.

  • Kenya: Pupils design sustainable hand-washing and soap-making systems.

  • Rohingya, Bangladesh: Boy and his poop puppet.

  • Tanzania: Model: A pregnant woman has to poop in the bushes.

  • South Sudan: An older boy helps a child practice hand washing skills.

  • Kenya: Expanding the puppet approach into Menstrual Hygiene Management.

  • Sierra Leone: A friendly latrine - don’t poop in the bushes!

  • Haiti: “I am Cholera!”

  • Madagascar: Open defecation - never lets you down as a shadow show!

LIVE FROM THE LATRINE: CLIP

Mr Poop is someone we meet every day, but when did you last see him interviewed?

On-the-spot reporter Kabii Kabooka Kibing is live at the latrine today to hear, from the horse’s mouth as it were, if people do what they say they do and wash their hands when – and there’s a song for this – it’s on your fingers, on your thumb, sticky poop, from your bum...

TIME TO WASH: CLIP

Taban’s daughter is sick and he’s spent all morning holding her so she can relieve herself (she has diarrhoea). Wash his hands? Don’t give him wash your hands! It’s only baby poop and he’s quite enough to do thank you very much! Taban, stumbling into the bushes himself the next day (another bad idea…), learns the hard way about the vital role of proper latrine use and hand washing with soap.

THE AMAZING MACHINE: CLIP

The city streets are choked with rubbish. Gerard and Francis are playing when a strange character arrives with a machine – an Amazing Machine! For its magic to work they must feed it, so they fill it with plastic, paper and whatever’s lying around. There’s a special place too for poop – a latrine. In time, the magic reveals itself: a beautiful space, and cleaner water! But… maybe the machine wasn’t magic… maybe the power was in the two boys.

FIND OUT MORE

OUR STORY‍ ‍
How an old puppet called Seamus led to an international creative collaboration

OUR PUPPETRY
Why puppets create space for difficult conversations and behaviour change

OUR FILMS‍ ‍
Developed with leading members of the original Muppet Show creative team

OUR TEAM
The artists, trainers, and trustees behind the work

OUR METHODOLOGY ‍
The No Strings Method: how film, puppetry and participation come together