Wednesday is World Toilet Day

This blog will be shifting gears for a week: I will be blogging about toilets (I usually blog about writers). I have already posted something on Zimbablog, which gives an idea of what the World Toilet Day is all about. Here is the information:

This coming Wednesday, November 19, is World Toilet Day. Declared by 17 international toilet associations in 2001, the day is built upon the following World Toilet Organization(WTO)objectives:

To establish a world body to coordinate and promote sanitation issues.
To continuously generate awareness for the importance of a good toilet environment.
To gather resources and promote creative development in the Research & Development, Usage & Attitudes and Aesthetics & Functionalities in Design for the betterment of health in general.
To propagate the need for better toilet standards in both the developed and developing economies of the world.
To provide and promote a community of all toilet associations, related organizations and committed individuals to facilitate an exchange of ideas, health and cultural matters.
To collate, publish and disseminate information globally in a timely and viable manner globally.

Since 2001 there has been established an annual World Toilet Summit and many other regional conferences. Each toilet association has also engaged in many activities promoting clean toilets in their own respective country. According to the Canadian Water and Wastewater Association (CWWA), “ World Toilet Day has become a global platform for academics, sanitation experts, toilet designers, environmentalists etc. to share the latest on rural and urban toilets.”

The World Toilet Organisation asks you, wherever you are, to request better equality (more facilities for women); more accessibility & special provisions (for the disabled & mothers with babies); clean toilets (for everyone); and more toilets (for the less fortunate).

Here is what the WTO suggests you can do on the day:

JOIN the cause on Facebook: Toilets for the Poor
BLOG about the cause November 19th, and write an article why we all deserve better
PROMOTE the day by putting your instant messenger on Facebook status as: TODAY IS WORLD TOILET DAY
SHARE by “cutting and pasting” in your email to your network.
CREATE an event in your school or city. Add your event for World Toilet Day on our website by emailing nora@worldtoilet.org

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

FREEDOM, a poem on South Africa by Afzal Moolla

Freedom The shackles have been cast off. Chains broken. People once squashed, under the jackboot of Apartheid, are free. Free at last! Freedom came on the 27th day in that April, 1994. Freedom from prejudice. From institutionalised racism. From being relegated to second-class citizenship. Freedom came and we danced. We cried. We ululated as we elected our revered Mandela. President Nelson Mandela. Our very own beloved 'Madiba'. Black and white and brown and those in-between, All hues of this rainbow nation, rejoiced as we breathed in the air of freedom and democracy. Today we pause. We remember. We salute. The brave ones whose sacrifices made this day possible, on that 27th day of April, 18 years ago. Today we dance. We sing. We ululate. We cry. Tears of joy and tears of loss. Of remembrance and of forgiveness. Of reconciliation and of memories. Today we pause. We acknowledge the tasks ahead. The hungry. The naked. The destitut...
Read more

Importance of African Languages in African Literature

Once in a while, I check  the search engines terms that are driving the most traffic to my blog, Wealth of Ideas, and the searches are often revealing of what kinds of information people are looking for  at any time. Today, of the several interesting ones,  "the importance of African languages in African literature" stood out. It's a topic I too am passionate about. I have written about it before in a post entitled " Language in African Literature ", but even this doesn't begin to cover the most important facts about the issue. Perhaps one day I will write treatise on the topic of language in African literature, and mini posts like this are my way of mapping a project description. But now let's go to some serious stuff on African languages in African Literature. Let me start by saying that I am annoyed by glossaries. Their intent seems to be to appeal to a foreign audience, or, most importantly, to any speakers for whom the glossaried language is for...
Read more

Abuja Writers' Forum Call for Submissions

Wordsbody has announced the following call for submissions: CAVALCADE literary journal, devoted to publishing original stories, poems,one-act plays, reviews, critical essays and art from an African perspective,will debut in October 2008 with a special edition. The tri-annual journal, a project of the Abuja Writers' Forum (AWF), is now seeking submissions for the second and third editions. Deadline: October 30, 2008 See more details here: Contribute to Cavalcade.
Read more