November 19 is World Toilet Day, an official United Nations (UN) international observance day to inspire action to tackle the global sanitation crisis, with the UN noting, “In a changing world, o“ Ending the Silent Crisis: Bread and Water for Africa® Brings Sanitation and Safety to Schools” nothing is constant: we’ll always need the toilet.
“No matter what lies ahead, we will always rely on sanitation to protect us from diseases and keep our environment clean.
“Today, billions of people still live without a safe toilet — with the poorest, especially women and girls, worst affected.”
The UN adds that as time goes by, the pressure on sanitation is only increasing.
“Across the world, aging infrastructure is failing. Investment hasn’t kept pace with demand.
“And climate change is reshaping our world – with glaciers melting, weather worsening, and sea levels rising.”
At Bread and Water for Africa®, through our WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) program, which includes digging wells, repairing malfunction wells, drilling boreholes and protecting freshwater springs, providing access to clean water for thousands annually, most recently we began developing latrine projects at schools in sub-Saharan Africa to ensure students – especially girls – are safe.
In February 2024, we reported on the sad fact that 789 girls who were enrolled at the Konzere Primary School for Girls in the Chikwawa District of Malawi had no choice but to use a toilet facility that was described by Alex Bango, chairperson of our in-country partner, the Faithful Heart Foundation (FHF), as “a miserable, unhygienic facility that brings fear and danger among them.”
Then, in May, we were pleased and proud to report that we had completed our first WASH toilet latrine project.
“Thank you, Bread and Water for Africa®,” wrote Blantyre on behalf of herself and hundreds of her fellow female students attending the school. “You have improved our hygiene. We were always worried every time nature called. We were not comfortable coming to school on the days we visited the moon. We were suffering from emotional trauma.
“The construction of these beautiful restrooms has indeed healed us all.”
Several completed projects later, we are today working with Alex in Malawi to provide safe and sanitary toilet facilities for nearly 1,100 girls and boys at the Ndalapa Primary School, Traditional Authority Ngabu, Chikwawa District.
“This project will assist both girls and boys at Ndalapa Primary School to have good sanitation, which will help to reduce deserting students from school, school drop-outs, and the spreading of diseases, as well as performance enhancement,” Alex stated in his grant request in October.
“The site area has no toilet, therefore it affects the students emotionally, mentally and psychologically as they must use the bush.”
He explained further that, “Students are defecating in the bush, which makes some learners deserting classes and missing lessons, which leads to poor performance during the end-of-term examinations – which leads many girls to drop out of school because of poor exam results.”
The objectives of the project are to reduce absenteeism among the students, increase enrollment, pass rates and academic performance and reduce the percentage of student dropouts.
The goals are to manage hygiene in the immediate short term, maintain the creation of a clean, disease-free environment for the medium term, and promote hygiene and sanitation awareness throughout the school and beyond for the long term.
And as the UN states this World Toilet Day: “We urgently need to invest in ‘future-ready’ sanitation today.
“Access to sanitation is a human right – fundamental to a healthy, dignified, productive life.”
