We've twinned our toilet!

Those familiar with canal boat cassette toilets will know they do not offer the best lavatorial experience available in the nation. Small, smelling of chemicals, and needing to be emptied every two to three days, they are a feature of canal life that one has to put up with.  However, we have been reminded recently that there are millions in our world today who would consider a loo as lowly as ours to be a luxury item.

Charities Cord and Tearfund have got together to create http://www.toilettwinning.org/, a charity whose sole purpose is to improve the sanitation of the 40% of the world's population who do not have access to adequate toilet facilities.  And they do it by encouraging people with decent toilets to "twin" theirs with one in a poor community elsewhere in the world.

To quote their website...

For £60, you can twin your toilet at home, work or school with a latrine in the remote Giharo Commune of Rutana Province, Burundi, or a village in Cambodia.

UK-based charities Cord and Tearfund have linked up to bring you Toilet Twinning, a unique way to help transform lives in poor communities across the world.

When you twin your toilet you’ll receive a framed certificate of your toilet's twin, containing a photo, the latrine's location and its GPS coordinates so you can look it up on Google Maps.

Tearfund and Cord will use the money raised to help provide access to better sanitation, clean water and hygiene education – helping people enjoy better health, go to school and work, and ultimately, begin to flush away poverty.

Since the launch of Toilet Twinning in 2009, more than 1,600 latrines have been built in Burundi,  providing safe loos for nearly 10,000 people! They have also received training on domestic hygiene and now have access to clean water.

Our framed twinning certificate now hangs proudly on the wall above our canal boat loo, and a sobering reminder that it is not as bad as one might first think! Come on - click here to twin your toilet, too!