The next time you visit the sacristy toilet in St Joseph’s church you may notice a plaque evidencing that it is twinned with a latrine in Afghanistan.
The Bedford Park Rotary Club is involved in a project with a charity called Toilet Twinning and is aiming to make Bedford a toilet-twinned town. The club has raised £1,200 for this purpose and we have been chosen as a twinned toilet in support of this!
The charity’s aim is to improve sanitation in the developing world where this is a problem with a lack of clean water and poor sanitation. They work with non-government organisations who are providing education, guidance and support in developing countries advising on the location and building of sustainable toilets and blocks of toilets.
We take it for granted that we have immediate access to clean water for bathing, toileting etc. and drinking the water, won’t make us ill.
This isn’t the case in many 3rd world countries, where sanitation isn’t “a given” and their water is unsafe.
Some eye-watering statistics are:
- According to World Health Organisation & UNICEF – 1.7 billion people don’t have somewhere safe to go to the toilet
- Also, they say today 1 in 4 people around the world lack safe drinking water
- Every day worldwide, over 700 children under 5 die from diarrhoea linked to unsafe water, sanitation, and poor health
- The United Nations advise the shocking statistic that children worldwide miss 443 million school days each year because of dirty water and poor sanitation
- The World Bank comment that every year women and girls spend 97 billion hours finding a safe place to go to the toilet
- The lack of a toilet makes women and girls a target for sexual attacks as they go to the toilet in the open, late at night
Bedford Park Rotary Club have made Toilet Twinning and raising awareness about these sanitation challenges one of its projects.
Toilet Twinning is a charity, working with non-government organisations, like the Tear Fund, who are providing education, guidance, and support “on the ground” in 3rd world countries, advising on the location and building of sustainable toilets and blocks of toilets.
The project, making Bedford a “Toilet Twinned Town” is supported by our Mayor Dave Hodgson and identified 20 organisations and businesses across Bedford to be recipients of a Toilet Twinning plaque evidencing their toilet has been twinned with a toilet in a 3rd world country.
£60.00 is the cost of twinning a single toilet (or £240.00 for a toilet block), so £1,200.00 was raised by Bedford Park Rotary Club to “twin” the toilets in the 20 organisations with 20 toilets in 3rd world countries.
For more information, visit their website.
