President Myra is pictured presenting the Toilet Twinning certificate to Veronica Farrar, Lady Captain at the Golf Club.
Members of SI Beverley and District have been saving pennies for several months in order to raise the £60 necessary to fund the provision of water and sanitation in a village in Africa.
One child dies every two minutes because of dirty water and poor sanitation. In Africa, half of young girls who drop out of school do so because they need to collect water or because the school hasn’t got a basic toilet. Women and girls are vulnerable to being bitten by snakes, or attacked, as they walk to the edge of their community to go to toilet in the open, late at night.
In Central African Republic, Ericaine and her family fled to a camp when militia destroyed their community. At first, they had only a tarpaulin to shield them from the rain, and nothing to protect them from hunger, diarrhea and typhoid. Many young children fell sick, and some even died. Women were forced to venture into the bush to go to the toilet, risking attack. Everything changed when the charity supported a project that installed proper toilets and handwashing stations in the camp, and made the water supply safe to drink. ‘I know how important the toilets are for our health. Things were so bad before: now, they’re so much better. I can’t thank you enough for helping us.’
For every £1 spent on water and sanitation, more than £5 is returned through reduced health costs and increased productivity.
How does it work? For £60, you can twin your toilet with a single, household latrine in an impoverished community. For £240, you can twin with a school block or a displacement camp block. You’ll receive a certificate to hang in your loo – featuring a photo of your toilet twin, the latrine’s location and even its GPS coordinates so you can find your twin online!
The club members continue to ‘spend a penny’ and save them to support further work by the Toilet Twinning Charity