ABOUT

Welcome to 123 Germ Free! We are all about hand washing and hand hygiene. Now lets get germ free! Here’s a little bit about us…

Our Mission

Our mission is to use ‘persuasive space’ graphics to improve and promote hand washing in children’s toilet spaces. Through the use of fun visuals, activities and learning materials, we can inform children and their parents about the importance of hand washing to maintain a positive hand hygiene culture.

What Is 123 Germ Free?

123 Germ Free is a series of fun wall displays and activities for school toilets and classrooms that are designed to improve children’s hand hygiene.

We have used fun characters as mascots to represent each step in the hand washing process:

• Step 1 is to use Soap – Super Soap
• Step 2 is to use Water – Water Warrior
• Step 3 is to Dry – Dynamic Dryer

Motivational wall stickers also give children a reason to wash their hands.

Floor stickers can guide the way to the sinks when they leave the cubicles.

Materials/activities for classrooms help keep the messages fresh and act as constant and engaging reminders.

How To Get Involved

Your school first signs up for free to become a 123-germ-free school.

You can then download any of our designs as free PDFs for you to print/laminate/put up. Full instructions are given.

Alternatively you can get at-cost self-adhesive stickers from our website.

You can download free classroom and parent packs too, to encourage better hand hygiene everywhere!

How It Started

123 Germ Free started out as a research council funded project at the University of Leeds after noticing the lack of motivational hand washing content aimed at children. We worked with children at 3 primary schools in the UK to develop the designs. Though our aim is to get kids washing their hands everywhere, not just schools!

Does It Work?

When we tested the designs, soap use went up by between 40-60% with the toilet wall display alone. As Covid-19 settles down we need to keep reminding children to wash their hands. 80% of common infections are still spread by poor hand hygiene.