On September 30th and October 1st, we held a workshop for visualizing fecal contamination for community people in Chawama area of Lusaka. This was a preliminary workshop conducted as part of our project aimed at developing participatory visualization  methods. This workshop was attended by 11 local people from Chawama Ward Development Committee(WDC), Lusaka City Council-Department of Public Health and Chawama Youth Projects. 

On the first day, we explained the overview of WASH(Water, Sanitation and Hygine) and the importance of visualizing fecal contamination to the participants. They were asked to predict, “Which media is the most contaminated?”. Following this, they collected samples from tap water, kitchen floor, stagnant water and cups. These samples were tested by themselves.

On the second day, participants observed the coliform colony, signs of fecal contamination, grown on the test plate, and began to count the number of the coliform colonies from their samples and visualized them. After seeing the contamination, they were surprised to discover unexpected contamination in their drinking water and surrounding environment. Based on their test results, they suggested various countermeasures to reduce the risk of diarrhea. 

In this project, we will develop this methodology and create an application to make it more accessible and easier to understand. The goal is to be visualized the risk factors of diarrhea and the effectiveness of various countermeasures.