Nila'Taanigis-Handwashing Stations for Navajo Nat.

Ya'at'eeh (Hello)! Our grassroots family organization is named Nila' Taanigis, which means "Wash Your Hands" in the Navajo language. Our small organization is collecting supplies to build simple and cost effective Hand Washing Stations for families on the Navajo Nation that do not have running water. To learn more visit our website.

A common method for hand washing for households without running water on the reservation is to use a basin in the house. This basin will be filled with a little bit of water and used and reused to wash hands by all family members (maybe changed a few times throughout the day) in order to save the precious water that families have to haul from many many miles away (often over rough dirt roads). With the COVID-19 pandemic especially, this common method for hand washing is not safe to use.

Our hand washing station kits include:
- A water container made from a 5gallon bucket with a spigot attached
- a smaller bucket to catch waste water
- hand soap
- paper towel holder and paper towels
A complete hand washing station kit costs about $12-13 to make. It depends on the price of the spigot that we order online from Amazon.

So far, we have been able to build 300 hand washing stations and delivered them to families on the Navajo reservation in northern Arizona in early July.  Since then, we decided to continue this project because we have received more requests from families in surrounding areas of the reservation. With this in mind, our current goal is to raise funding to purchase supplies to assemble and deliver an additional 300 hand washing stations. Water is precious, water is life, water can save lives!

To date, our project has only been made possible through donations of supplies from friends, family, coworkers, and our own limited funds.  Now we are seeking additional support through monetary donations to meet the demand for these hand washing stations.  Every dollar will go toward purchasing supplies to build and deliver these kits to the reservation (in very rural areas with unimproved roads).  Anything helps. $12 buys a complete kit for a family.  You can help in a really big way by contributing so we can help provide these families with tools they need to keep their families safe by washing their hands.

We thank you so much for reading about our project and hope you will donate to our cause!

Ahehee' (Thank you)

~Nila' Taanigis Team

Watch our latest story on KOAT 7 News 

Visit our Facebook page to learn more about our project 

Watch our interview with KRQE NM Living Show 

Read more about our project in this article featured in the Navajo Times