Although human urine contains nutrients for plant growth, very few community schools in Nepal use a urine diversion dry toilet (UDDT) and apply the human urine as fertilizer in their school garden. Using human urine in agriculture reduces the use of chemical fertilizers, thus saving the expenditure associated with it. Application of human urine improves the soil fertility and may contribute to increased food security among school children if the school can supply the canteen with food for mid-day meals. This study adopted a Participatory Action Research (PAR) approach in order to understand stakeholder perspectives and involve them in the planning and implementation of urine diverting toilets. The data for this study were collected from five teachers’ focus group discussions. This paper presents teachers’ perceptions of the urine diversion dry toilet system and use of human urine as a fertilizer for the school garden. Only a few teachers accepted that human urine could be used as fertilizer, however, they were not willing to use it on their crops since it was considered impure. Due to a perceived bad odor and the uncomfortable sitting position on the UDDT, particularly for females, teachers disliked this toilet and they felt using urine as fertilizer was unnecessary. One of the key lessons drawn from the study is that schools, in collaboration with local governments, should employ participatory approaches to understanding and engaging local stakeholders, including teachers, to minimize negative perceptions prior to the application of human urine as fertilizer in the school garden.

This review paper highlights the gaps and problems on source separation of human excreta; implementing and adopting human urine as nutrients for agriculture. The objective of the paper is to appraise the historical context behind the promotion of Urine Diversion Dry Toilet/Eco-san toilet and its relevance in rural Nepalese context. Moreover, it highlights the experiences regarding agricultural perspectives and livelihood by applying human urine as a fertilizer. Furthermore, it helps to understand and analyze the major issues, gaps and problems in acceptance and use of human excreta in Nepalese context for scaling up of its application and its transformation through school education system. Database search based on ‘Free text term’ or key word search was the strategy used to map of all relevant articles from multiple databases; Medline (1987-2018), MeSH (2005-2018), CINAHL (1998-2018) and OvidMedline (1992-2019). For each the outputs were downloaded into RefWorks databases. Specifically, this paper focuses on urine diversion to demonstrate its potential to elegantly separate and collect as nutrients and desire to control pathogens and micro-pollutants help in sanitation. It is recommended that an urgent need to participate community people and school children to disseminate users’ perceptions, attitudes and behaviour concerning the urine diversion toilets.

This article explores the possibilities of the use of eco-san in the school garden in the Nepalese community school, focusing on transformative pedagogical impacts on the social learning environment of the school. In particular, the use of urine as a fertilizer in the school garden through eco-san and linking pedagogical alignment to provide a pleasant experience that has a positive impact on students’ meaningful engagement, social connections, and developing confidence. The main finding for the research question came from qualitative data collected from students, parents, and teachers through in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, participant observations and informal conversations. This was supported by analyses of qualitative data on students’ learning, collaborative inquiry, teachers' and parents' engagement and perceptions on the use of human urine as fertilizer from eco-san, and school gardening activities. Results showed that the gardening program attributes valued most highly by the parents and teachers included increased students' meaningful engagement, opportunities for experiential and integrated learning through dialogue conferences, collaborative inquiry, and building social skills like cooperation, sharing and argumentation. Future research should explore whether effects persist over time and if and how changes in students’ positive attitude affect learning through school gardening activities applying human. Suggestions for applying results to future studies are provided.

Appropriate handwashing can prevent 50–70% of water and foodborne infections. However, schoolchildren who are in the formative stage of life, particularly in low-income countries like Nepal, are deprived of such a lifesaving skill. This study investigates the effectiveness of a school-based participatory action research intervention to promote handwashing with soap among basic level community school students in Nepal. Teachers, the school management committee, the participatory action research committee, and child-club members actively participated in designing and implementing the intervention. This study employed a semi-structured interview with the headteacher, five focus group discussions, and spot observations during 50 handwashing with soap events involving students, to collect the data. This study assesses the handwashing situation of students before and after the intervention. As part of the intervention, participatory teaching methods such as singing, drawing, showing a video, games, and demonstrations were used. Findings from basic level students who actively participated in hygiene sessions and increased their handwashing with soap before meals and after toilet use were used as a comparison to baseline. Participants reported that the intervention was perceived positively, pragmatic, and cost-effective. This intervention study concluded that handwashing behaviors improved because of the influence of sensitization sessions and demonstrations about handwashing. However, some predominant issues in the teaching of handwashing practices include limited hygiene contents in the curriculum and the practical use of teaching and learning activities. The lack of availability of soap at handwashing stations is the main barrier in sustaining handwashing behaviors in schoolchildren.

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