The project was aimed to improve nutrition for the poorest and marginalised population, especially women, adolescent girls, and children as well as healthcare workers in Malawi, Ghana, and Pakistan.

In Ghana, the five-year project, "Increase Gains in Nutrition by Integration, Education, Evaluation & Empowerment (IGNIT3)", is being implemented in selected communities and health facilities in the Jirapa Municipality.

It is being implemented by WaterAid Ghana in partnership with the Ghana College of Nurses and Midwives, the Ghana Health Service and UNICEF with funding from Global Affairs Canada (GAC).

As part of activities leading to its implementation, WaterAid Ghana facilitated a stakeholder workshop to design a comprehensive hygiene behaviour change intervention package for the project.

Speaking at the workshop in Jirapa, Dr. Om Prasad Gautam, Hygiene Lead, WaterAid UK, stressed the need for improved hygiene practices to reduce diarrheal diseases and under-nutrition in Ghana which he described as "biggest killers among under-five children."
He, therefore, said the project would be integrated into Ghana's nutrition interventions to address hygiene behaviours such as poor hand washing practices, which posed a risk for diarrheal disease.

The workshop followed formative research by WaterAid Ghana to understand the drivers of multiple hygiene behaviour practices such as handwashing with soap, food hygiene and open defecation and health behaviours such as practicing exclusive breastfeeding.

Dr. Gautam explained that the project would also target healthcare workers with hygiene interventions to promote hand washing among health service providers to hospital-acquired infection for their clients.

Mr Felix Gbevillah, the Project Coordinator for Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) and Public Health at WaterAid Ghana, explained that promoting the health benefits of hygiene could only lead to temporal behaviour change.
He, however, said: "People are likely to have long-lasting behaviour change when hygiene is promoted as a matter of pride and as a matter of rising social status."

Mr Gbevillah indicated that the project aligned with the Ghana government's reproductive, maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health and nutrition strategic plan for 2020-2025.

Mr John Maakpe, the Health Promotion Offer at the Upper West Regional Health Directorate, observed that hygiene practices, especially hand washing at some health facilities in the region were not encouraging and attributed that to unavailability of WASH facilities.
He expressed the hope that the hygiene behaviour change interventions would reinforce positive hygiene behaviours among healthcare workers for their clients to emulate but said that required a gradual process.

Madam Clare Banye, a health volunteer at Kyobaryiri community in the Jirapa Municipality, who participated in the workshop, said it had informed her about some critical hygiene behaviours to adopt.

She said she would mobilise her community to promote good hygiene and sanitation practices to reduce hygiene- related illness in the community.
Public health professionals, community health volunteers, social marketers and behavioural scientists among others participated in the workshop.