Flushed with Success - St Albans is now a Toilet Twinned City! | News | Blog | Events

On Mon 14 Nov Soroptimist International St Albans and District Members and guests celebrated St Albans becoming a Toilet Twinned City.

This special event was the pinnacle of a project that began in 2015 when our Club heard that Soroptimists in Chester had made Chester a Twinned City. Soroptimist Clubs have long used the special days like World Water Day 22 March and World Toilet Day 19 November as a focus for action and fundraising because we understand the importance of sanitation and toilets globally. Today, 3.6 billion people are living with poor quality toilets that ruin their health and pollute their environment. Every day, more than 800 children die from diarrhoea linked to unsafe water, sanitation and poor hygiene. Girls often stop going to school when they reach puberty because of the lack of toilets. The £60 from each certificate bought from Toilet Twinning is spent on sanitation projects in countries from Afghanistan to Zambia. To become a Toilet Twinned City your City has to have 30 certificates in different categories including schools, churches, council offices as well as individual ones.

Owners of some of the 30 certificates in St Albans joined us for our celebrations – see the photo above which includes Jenny Hawkins from Greenwood United Reformed Church (where we held our event), Carolyn Alexander from St Peter’s Church, Steve Simpson from Mix FM 92.6 (formerly Radio Verulam), plus our 4 new recipients Paul Davidson from the Abbey Theatre, Benji Aarons Richardson from Watling View School, Steve McConnell from the White Hart Tap, and Janet Audley-Charles for the Cottonmill Community and Cycling Centre. Many of our Members brought their certificates – from their homes and their work places – e.g. Janet Audley-Charles and London Road Pre-School. There are also certificates in St Albans Cathedral, St Peters Church, the Museum and Gallery, the Council Offices and more….

On the evening we were able to present our last 4 certificates to make up the 30 to Paul Davidson from the Abbey Theatre, Benji Aarons Richardson from Watling View School, Steve McConnell from the White Hart Tap, and Janet Audley-Charles representing the Cottonmill Community and Cycling Hub. We know they will all put their certificates up in their loos to encourage more people to join in and support Toilet Twinning.

We fundraised for some of the certificates by holding table top bottle sales at our meetings and having Toilet Twinning collecting boxes in our loos. Some organisations fundraised to buy their own certificates as did some individuals. Once we were informed about any twinned loos they could be added to our list. There are probably many more than 30 twinned loos in St Albans – we just don’t know about them all!

Jane Slatter said “thanks so much to everyone who has supported this campaign – our Members and supporters who helped us to keep going so that we can all be here today to celebrate.”

Jane had a video message from an exuberant Cara Miles at Toilet Twinning saying “Congratulations Soroptimist International St Albans and District, what a fantastic achievement!!!! St Albans is now officially a “Toilet Twinned City”.

Many attendees on the night also spoke up and congratulated the St Albans Soroptimists on their campaign and everyone gave a huge round of applause.

Sadly the Mayor of the City and District of St Albans, Councillor Geoff Harrison was poorly and unable to join us as our guest of honour to accept the St Albans Toilet Twinned City Certificate. We will be able to present it to him when he will be our guest at our “Orange the World” launch event at St Albans Museum and Gallery on 25th Nov https://sigbi.org/st-albans-and-district/2022/orange22/ when we kick off this year’s campaign of 16 days of activism to end gender based violence from 25 Nov to 10 Dec. The photo here is of Club Co-Presidents Helen Byrne, Denise Powell, and Barbara Saunders being presented with our Toilet Twinned City Certificate by Sarah Suddrey from Toilet Twinning at the Soroptimist Conference in Belfast in October.

After all of the presentations we then celebrated properly with cake and bubbles! The project slowed down during the COVID pandemic but was picked up again with renewed energy in 2022 so we were really thrilled to be able to celebrate together. We were all flushed with success!