Since 2015, around 500 million low-cost toilets have been diffused around the world, but still about 2 billion people are responding to the call of nature in the open daily mainly due to lack of access to a functioning toilet, but sometimes simply by choice. This practice is called open defecation or OD. However all countries, as members of the United Nations, have pledged to become open defecation free or ODF by 2030. Thus, the UN theme for World Toilet Day, November 19, 2021 – was ‘Valuing Toilets’. But easier said than done! How should toilets be valued and by whom? To gain insight – FIN collaborated with Engineers without Borders Ireland to organise a webinar and several awareness programs.
The webinar included four experts in a panel discussion along with students who were asked to challenge the experts to gain more insight.
For Mr. M.S. Subburaman, from SCOPE, who recently received the Padma Shri, India’s fourth-highest civilian award, the problem of ‘lack of valuation’ has to be addressed at all levels – from policy makers, to engineers, masons and households. Incorrect valuation is largely founded on inadequate knowledge and understanding of the different types of toilets and their fit according to the local climatic and ecological conditions.
Mr. Lovans Owusu-Takyi, CEO of the Institute for Sustainable Energy and Environmental Solutions (ISEES) in Ghana, which has been nominated for the Ghana Energy Awards 2021, argued that technology design is crucial. Particularly for urban zones in developing countries, as a decentralized sanitation system – the biogas toilet seems the ideal way to address both energy poverty and the need to ensure access to toilets.
Ms. Elaine Doyle from the Board of Directors of Engineers Without Borders Ireland, explained that while access to functioning toilets is not a problem anywhere in Ireland, nevertheless there is a problem of misuse of toilets – especially of flushing items like wipes, cigarette butts and even diapers. So citizens’ education on toilet usage is crucial and here it is imperative that the communication strategy is designed to be effective vis-à-vis the targeted group.
Students Tomas Agnew and Sarah Addae asked good questions, which led to more rounds of reflections on instigating behavioural change under challenging circumstances.
Dr. Amrita Kamalini Bhattacharyya, from the Institute of Management Technology, Ghaziabad agreed that Elaine’s work corresponds most directly to nudging behavioural change. A nudge is any novelty that changes the mind-set of a targeted individual/group towards behavioural change. Here Elaine’s nudge is education – giving facts to people so that they use toilets properly. Both Subburaman and Lovans are also using education – the former for households/policy makers to make informed technology choices and the latter to promote the biogas toilet model. Hence, the most important nudge they are all using is education and communication.
We will be compiling these findings in a report and sharing it on our social media handles.
In addition to the above, Ms. Emma Brown, Program Manager for Engineers without Borders Ireland and Dr. Raja Venkataramani, Senior Advisor at FIN, introduced their respective organisations with interesting videos – which you will see in the days to come. The video shown by John Fawcett Peck from NCAD on promoting the ecosan toilet model was particularly exciting for us!
Now, coming to the set of six quiz masters who were supposed to implement a sanitation awareness educational workshop created by FIN – things turned out slightly different from that planned – making us all remember that ‘while man proposes, it is God who disposes!’.
Mr. Monesh Mahesh and Ms. Sarah Addae conducted their quiz programs in Chennai and Accra respectively and reported a good audience, and fun and positive feedback from participants. Mr. Paranjothi could not conduct the quiz in Kameswaram village as by government order schools remained closed on November 19th, due to unprecedented heavy rains. Elaine ended up doing her quiz differently also. She made it in to a teaching tool to share with a group of teachers and it will be run in some schools next year. Finally, one of the quiz masters had been suffering since a week from a health issue and so we requested him to get well first. Another quiz master dropped out from the entire proceedings on the day of his quiz. All in all – another interesting experience for FIN, with which we were all very happy!
World Toilet Day Festival – A great learning experience!
