Alice’s mission : To break the chain of COVID-19 transmission

Alice Sawadogo is 20 years old. As well as being in her final year at Lycée Philippe Zinda Kaboré, a school in Ouagadougou, she is one of the leaders of the association of students and schoolchildren working as volunteers in the fight against the spread of Coronavirus. She is one of 15,000 young volunteers deployed throughout the country, through the national volunteering programme.

Community volunteer Alice Sawadogo teaching a fifth grade student from Tanghin Taambila School how to use hand sanitizer.

Alice and her peers travel around schools in Ouagadougou to raise pupils’ awareness on the importance of adopting preventative actions to break the chain of COVID-19 transmission. Despite preparing for her exams, Alice works as a volunteer to help protect younger students during the pandemic and support their well-being. While waiting for her classes to resume, she willingly devotes herself to awareness-raising activities.

“I am young and passionate about this work. Explaining and discussing things and convincing people are all things I really like to do. Plus, I’m in my natural element because we’re still in a school environment,” she says.

To access the classroom, students must wash their hands with soap and water and wear a mask.

There are 68 students in the fifth grade class at Tanghin Taambila Primary School. To respect social distancing, the students have been split into four groups and put into different classrooms. Outside each class, there are handwashing facilities with soap. To access the classroom, students must wash their hands with soap and water and wear a mask. “The students seem to have mastered the lesson on preventative actions. The challenge now lies in turning this into practice because the habits have not yet been ingrained in most of the students,” Alice observes, as if to emphasize that there is more awareness-raising work to be done.

Sanoussa Compaoré is the school headteacher. He applauds the volunteers’ commitment to raising student awareness on preventative actions against COVID-19. “Their presence comes as a relief and allows us to focus more on the curriculum, which we must complete at all costs to give students the chance to succeed in their exams. We’re already way behind schedule because of classes temporarily stopping due to the virus,” he says.

A group of community volunteers during an awareness-raising session in a fifth grade class at Tanghin Taambila Primary School.

The volunteers have been trained and equipped with awareness-raising tools to facilitate public information and community engagement sessions. The project, implemented by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) thanks to financing from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), will make it possible to inform the public on pandemic-related hygiene and prevention measures.

“The commitment of these volunteers and their ability to build trust with local leaders, parents, young people and children in neighbourhoods and communities will have considerable added value in terms of improving the population’s understanding of the disease and how to protect themselves,” says James Mugaju, Deputy Representative of UNICEF in Burkina Faso.

Since the start of the pandemic in Burkina Faso, awareness-raising activities and community engagement on COVID-19 prevention have reached over 9 million people in the country.

For photos, please see https://photos.app.goo.gl/oqCtNiKEfHnF7v4BA