“Handwashing is one of the areas I have always focused on, it will make no sense to teach about handwashing and not making provision for handwashing station that could be used.” Barrister Nguzo said at the commissioning of a renovated borehole in Aleita community of Abuja on the occasion of 2019 Global Handwashing Day which brought together not less than 200 students from seven primary schools to learn about the importance of handwashing.

Barrister Nguzo Ogbodo is the Founder and President of Hope and Dreams Initiative, a non-governmental organization committed to transforming the lives of young children from under-served communities in Nigeria. In addition to the borehole project, Nguzo’s organization also repaired and restocked the library of LEA Primary School, Aleita, renovated the staff toilets and provided a handwashing station for the school and the community.

According to Ogbodo, “Global Handwashing Day is an annual global advocacy day dedicated to increasing awareness and understanding about the importance of handwashing with soap as an easy and affordable way to prevent diseases and save lives.”

Explaining what prompted her to take on the task, Nguzo said, “I had established the library before now and saw that it needed to be renovated to make it a standard library conducive for students to learn. Our team also realized that the community was lacking access to clean water so we decided to rehabilitate the abandoned community borehole.”

Annually, the Global Handwashing Day event is marked on October 15 to motivate and mobilize people around the world to improve their handwashing habits especially washing with soap at critical points during the day, the theme for 2019 was “Clean Hands for All.”