We’ve handed the Green Impact blog over to Student Recruitment & Admissions with Global Engagement Green Impact team today! Ashley, the team’s Green Impact Project Assistant, writes about their fabulous fundraising work over the past few months. You should be especially interested if you’re struggling for ideas on how to raise enough money for the toilet twinning action in the toolkit! If you or your team would like to contribute to the blog, get in touch at greenimpact@sheffield.ac.uk.
A shocking 1 in 3 people around the world don’t have somewhere safe to go to the toilet. That’s 2.4 billion of us. Lack of sanitation hits low-income countries such as Nigeria, Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Uganda the hardest. As a result, poor sanitation is one of the world’s biggest killers, causing deadly diseases such as cholera, polio and typhoid to be spread amongst communities. It places high pressure on young girls, causing over 50% in Africa to drop out of school to collect water. These young girls are also at risk of being bitten by snakes as they squat in grasses, also placing them at higher risk of sexual assault. Despite the UN recognising that access to safe, clean water and sanitation is a human right, the efforts to provide safe sanitation have fallen far below the targets that were promised.
The action of charities such as ‘Toilet Twinning’ could help solve this global sanitation crisis. Since being set up in 2008, this charity has already built 64,187 toilets, and has raised over £2.3 million in aid of providing clean water and safe sanitation. The sanitation projects are varied, being tailored to fit the community’s specific needs. The aim of their project is to make long-lasting change within communities. This is focussed on educating local people, to encourage further toilets to be built outside of the charity. For example, in Tanzania, health issues are strongly linked to lack of sanitation, therefore the focus of the project is to educate people on the importance of sanitation and hygiene in relation to disease. Since the efforts of toilet twinning in Tanzania, health conditions such as diarrhoea and skin problems are much less common!
Feel inspired?
There are numerous ways to join the bandwagon and get involved with the great work that toilet twinning is doing. You can twin your home toilet, your workplace, and even your country! Donating £60 to the charity will mean that a toilet is built in a country of your choice. Raising £240 can build a whole block of toilets within a school or displacement camp. This money is not to simply build the toilet, it is to transform a community. This is through the aid of workshops and action groups from the charity, which further assure a community that building toilets is the way towards improvement. Once you have twinned your toilet, you will receive a certificate, and GPS coordinates of the toilet so you can track it, to see exactly where you’ve made a positive difference within a community. The charity won’t leave you on your own to fund raise. Dependent on the amount of money you plan to raise, toilet twinning sends you a much-needed pack filled with items to help you fund raise. This includes leaflets, soaps, t-shirts, banners, all you could want to help get you on your way!
Join the revo-loo-tion!
People around the world are getting involved in fund raising events to raise money towards toilet twinning. These have taken place across a variety of different settings, from the NHS, to schools, community groups, churches, and various workplaces. Whether it be bake sales, sponsored runs, toilet-themed games and activities, inspiration can be taken from the thousands of people that have already raised money to twin their toilets.
Inspiring fundraising is taking place within Green Impact Sheffield, where the ‘Student Recruitment & Admissions with Global Engagement’ team have raised £270 towards toilet twinning in just a couple of months. This is enough to build three toilets in Uganda, and one in Sierra Leone. To raise this fantastic sum, the team have held various fundraising events since October, including a vegan friendly bake sale, an unwanted gifts and Christmas cracker sale, and a ‘through the keyhole’ style toilet quiz. However, the fundraising doesn’t stop there. In the upcoming months, the team hopes to host an unloved Christmas presents raffle, amongst other events, to raise as much money as possible.
There are many other ways to help toilet twinning besides fundraising. For instance, you can become a toilet twinning ambassador, with the charity looking out for enthusiastic people to volunteer at a range of their events. This even includes festivals, where accommodation, food and travel are accounted for! You can also help to make a change through volunteering as a speaker to help spread the word, within school assemblies, community groups and churches.
For more information on global sanitation issue, and for more inspiration on how to get involved, visit toilettwinning.org, or head to their twitter page @toilettwinning.
