After the 2025 Myanmar earthquake, Daw Chaw Su* and her family were displaced to a crowded monastery shelter with limited sanitation facilities. Save the Children’s WASH response provided toilets, bathing spaces, hygiene supplies, and awareness sessions, improving health, safety, dignity, and living conditions for earthquake-affected communities in Mandalay.
“When the earthquake hit, it wasn’t just the violent shaking that scared me, the sound itself was also deeply frightening. I still feel like it was just yesterday." For Daw Chaw Su*, the trauma of the 2025 Myanmar earthquake is triggered not just by physical memory but by sound.
Before the disaster struck, Daw Chaw Su* had opened a small, traditional rice and curry shop in her village within the Mandalay Region. The disaster destroyed her community, collapsing infrastructure, damaging local religious buildings, and leaving her wooden home structurally compromised and leaning severely to one side. As it was not safe for living anymore, her family had to leave the house. Overnight, Daw Chaw Su*, her husband, and their children joined the families seeking emergency refuge at a monastery in Mandalay.
While having a shelter there, as they didn’t have a proper job to earn money for the family and it was challenging to get an employment, Daw Chaw Su* started selling traditional Burmese fritters to support the family.
The transition from independent rural households to high-density communal living introduced immediate challenges, particularly regarding Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) infrastructure. Upon arrival, hundreds of displaced individuals from diverse backgrounds were forced to depend on just two functional toilets.
"It’s crowded, and the space was small for families," Daw Chaw Su* states. "We had to share toilets, and often we had to wait to use them. Some people even went to nearby villages to take a shower. Sometimes I had to skip bathing in the morning because I could not always access the bathroom."
Daw Chaw Su* standing in front of her shelter, where she currently lives with her family. Save the Children Myanmar
For women and children in the settlement, the lack of private, gender-segregated bathing spaces presented significant safety and privacy concerns. Furthermore, the high concentration of displaced people, combined with a lack of waste management tools, created poor environmental hygiene conditions, substantially increasing the risk of disease transmission.
As a part of Save the Children’s emergency response, an integrated WASH intervention was implemented at locations such as temporary shelter and the monastery where Daw Chaw Su* and her family was staying. The emergency response focused on two parallel interventions: building WASH structures and behavioural adaptation.
Save the Children provided water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) support to Daw Chaw Su’s* family and other earthquake-affected communities by constructing toilets, bathing spaces, and water tanks. In addition, families received hygiene awareness sharing sessions and basins, handwashing soaps, waste bins, and trash bags to improve hygiene practices in their living area. Regular WASH awareness-raising and hygiene sessions were also conducted to systematically improve community knowledge.
Daw Chaw Su* using the water and sanitation facilities provided by Save the Children. Save the Children Myanmar
Now, Daw Chaw Su* uses the infrastructure to establish a community-led maintenance routine, along with other people in her displaced shelter.
"I personally want to keep things clean, so I started cleaning around the shelter and those shared facilities," she explains. “With this support, we no longer worry about hygiene. Since there are many families and different genders here, having a proper bathing space is important for us.”
Access to WASH and hygiene facilities not only provide cleanliness but also dignity for the communities that are displaced.
