A clean toilet, fresh water, soap and privacy … things that we take for granted.
Access to sanitation facilities has been recognised as a human right by the United Nations since 2015.
Yet millions of people have no access to these facilities – their ‘toilet’ is out in the bush.
Women are therefore at risk from sexual assault, especially at night. They can’t manage their menstrual hygiene. Girls’ education suffers because of a lack of toilets where they can deal with their period. Children die because their drinking water is contaminated by human waste.
For several years, therefore, Crosby’s Soroptimists have supported the charity Toilet Twinning.
The latest ‘twins’?
- The toilet at StoryHouse Café, Crosby, with a latrine in the small village of Yalo, near the town of Bouna in north-eastern Ivory Coast
- The ladies’ loo at West Lancashire Golf Club, with a school block in Tanzania. This was a joint project with Crosby’s Friendship Link Club SI Jesi in Italy – and involved imaginative fundraising!
- The compost toilet at Lunt Meadows Nature Reserve , with a girls’ toilet at a school in Malawi
More may well be ‘in the pipeline’.