My name is Sahi BOUKARI. I'm the head of the Department of Land and Environmental Affairs of the Toucountouna Town Hall and my mission is to clean up the environment.

Before the partnership with the town hall of MERELBEKE, the central market was untidy like many other markets in Benin, diseases were also recurrent for the users, following this bitter observation, the ideas of hygiene and sanitation were born.

In order to execute our ideas, our services have organised training sessions for the different structures and layers of the central market.

In order to achieve our objectives, awareness-raising sessions were held for active vendors on their different practices and to bring them to change their behaviour. This action was carried out at the level of food and drink vendors every day in the central market of Toucountouna.

The committees in charge of implementing the training make unannounced visits to the market to check the level of understanding and the participation of the users.

In order to clean up the market, the team of women volunteers has been provided with working equipment to carry out their activities.

The cleaning is carried out every day before the central market by small groups of volunteers from the association. The rubbish around the market gets cleaned up. 
All these efforts are provided through the activities carried out thanks to the partners and have resulted in a healthy market.

Translation done by Pietro Betlem, student in translation at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel                                    

subtitle: Ziba_ar