Tippy Taps for Africa - A Winning Idea!

A woman demonstrates hand washing with a tippy tap

Recently we got the exciting news that Ce Zhang, UVP alum and member of the board of trustees, teamed up with a classmate at Penn State University (Adam Mosa) and won the Johnson and Johnson Milking the Rhino 2011 award for Best Healthcare Solution.

Zhang and Mosa won the award using a program developed in partnership with Uganda Village Project called Tippy Taps for Africa. View the winning video here! Tippy Taps for Africa has been working with UVP ever since Ce Zhang served in our internship program in 2009. He was inspired by the tippy taps he saw and wanted to do more to study and promote the beneficial effects of this simple innovation made from local materials. With the help of UVP staff and board members, he assembled a team of Ugandan research assistants who helped him complete a research project showing that in a comparison of schools where tippy taps were installed versus control schools with just an education program about the importance of hand washing, schools with tippy taps showed significantly improved self reported number of hand washing episodes and a significantly decreased number of episodes of stomach pain. Also, 100% of students told their parents about the tippy taps and what they had learned.

To learn more about Tippy Taps for Africa, you can view an interview with Ce at this link where he explains his project as part of the Penn State Undergraduate Research Spotlight series.