The Final hands4health WASH Symposium
Muttenz, Switzerland – Closing a Chapter on 4.5 Years of WASH Innovation in Schools and Health Care Facilities
On June 17-18, 2025, the hands4health consortium came together for the last time in its current form at the FHNW Campus in Muttenz, Switzerland. Co-organized with the Swiss Water & Sanitation Consortium (SWSC), the two-day WASH Symposium marked the close of a 4.5-year project dedicated to strengthening water, sanitation, and hygiene in schools and primary health care facilities across four countries.
About hands4health
hands4health was a Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC)-funded project that promoted safe hygiene practices and improved water quality in schools and primary health care facilities through low-cost, practical solutions. Working in Palestine, Nigeria, Mali, and Burkina Faso, the project combined behavior change, water chlorination, hygiene awareness, and infrastructure maintenance to protect health in settings that often lack reliable water supply systems –- addressing a stark global reality: 45% of primary health care facilities and 50% of schools in low- and middle-income countries still lack access to basic handwashing, hygiene, and water supply.
The project was led by a diverse consortium of NGOs, academic institutions, and private sector partners. Skat Foundation was a consortium member throughout, contributing expertise in communications, knowledge management, and stakeholder engagement.
Day 1: Sharing Knowledge Across Borders
The first day welcomed a hybrid audience – around 40 participants on-site and approximately 45 joining online – reflecting the project’s global reach. The program moved through four thematic areas that defined much of hands4health’s work:
- WASH FIT and the strengthening of primary health care
- Sustaining hardware in schools in crisis settings
- From field implementation to strategic integration at national level
- Measuring impact: data, indicators, and lessons learned
The day was closed with a keynote by Martina Schmidt, Research Focal point at SDC, who presented the agency’s evolving approach to research for development and underlined the importance of applied, collaborative research for achieving long-term impact.
Participants then gathered on the top floor of the FHNW building for an apéro riche – a convivial moment to reflect on shared achievements and the relationships built over years of collaborative work across four countries and multiple disciplines.
Day 2: From Evidence to Action
The second day was held fully on-site and dedicated to interactive workshops, structured around four questions critical to the future of WASH programming:
- How can we better engage stakeholders across levels?
- In what ways can evidence serve as a pathway to scale?
- Why is behavior change essential for sustainable WASH outcomes?
- What role does advocacy play in shifting mindsets and priorities?
The diversity of experience in the room (spanning health, education, engineering, and policy) sparked substantive discussions and opened new avenues for collaboration beyond the project’s formal close.
A Milestone Worth Marking
One of the symposium’s most meaningful aspects was the presence of partners from all four hands4health project countries alongside all three regional advisors of the SWSC – together in Switzerland for the first time. Their contributions grounded the discussions in lived field experience and served as a powerful reminder of what coordinated, evidence-based action across contexts can achieve.
As hands4health enters its final chapter, the Muttenz symposium was not only a celebration of what was accomplished but also a call to carry forward the lessons, partnerships, and momentum that 4.5 years of collaborative work have built. The conversations started here do not end with the project.