Surprise Soap
Engaging Soap Innovation to Encourage Behaviour Change
Location: Somalia
Host: World Vision
Developer: LSHTM, Save the Children, World Vision
Funding Needed: $98,000
Surprise Soap is a bar of soap that aims to improve handwashing habits amongst youth by impacting their perceptions of hygienic practices. At the center of the bar of soap is a toy, incentivizing children to use the soap and reach the toy at its core by washing their hands more often.
The Challenge
While handwashing is becoming more commonplace globally, the hygienic practice is often overlooked by policymakers and development practitioners in fragile states like Somalia. Children are often excluded from hygiene practices, and yet they shoulder the burden of poor handwashing practices. The use of soap is fundamental in reducing high rates of diarrhoeal, respiratory (lung and ear), and skin infections among children. Different approaches have been adopted across the globe to foster positive handwashing behavior. To trigger behavioral change and capture the attention of children in the use of soap, humor, and a non-judgemental approach have been used as a social marketing approach.
Despite extensive efforts of social marketing conducted by government ministries, achieving behavior change in hygiene practices in Somalia requires taking into consideration factors such as day-to-day living practices and socio-economic circumstances.
The Solution
Surprise Soap seeks to impact the attitude and perceptions of Somali children towards handwashing with soap to inform Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) planning. The focus is on children’s perceptions and acceptability of products that improve handwashing practices. Constructs and principles of the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) and or DBC will be adopted in the target villages.
The Impact
The purpose of the pilot is to:
Identify the physical barriers that may prevent children from handwashing with soap
Measure the usage of the soap by the children in the study by analyzing:
Number of periods children washed their hands per day
Time spent during each period of hand-washing
Safe storage of soap
Incidence of soap breakage (incidence where children break soap to access toy).
Measure the accompanying behavior-change messaging, accompanying soap distribution.
Identify any change in beliefs, attitudes, and behavioral intentions that might be attributed to using the surprise soap
Next Steps
Pilot Phase:
The findings of the pilot phase will assist service providers in designing and delivering durable hygiene promotion programs in Somalia and build on the local supply chain of Surprise Soap. Given the increasing need to hand wash with soap during the COVID-19 pandemic, two villages will be selected, and 500 children will have access to a month’s supply of Surprise Soap. The household heads will work with community health workers to establish the usage of the soap. A pre-and post-distribution survey will be conducted and data relayed through the ODK platform. The pilot will also set the base for a market analysis that will be done after the COVID-19 response to seeing how local producers could manufacture Surprise Soap in Somalia.
Post-Pilot Phase:
Findings from the pilot will be used to justify the scale of Surprise Soap procurement and distribution through SomReP’s network of 165 villages. Findings will be used to justify piloting the establishment of Surprise Soap distributors in Somalia. In parallel, SomReP will identify soap producers and link them with actors who have 3-D printers in order to manufacture the toy at the core of the bar of soap locally.
More Information
Article on Surprise Soap: https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/news/2018/innovative-surprise-soap-gets-children-washing-hands-emergencies-lifesaving