Timor celebrates World Toilet Day

A few weeks back it was World Toilet Day (Loron Mundial Sintina). Incidentally, I started work at WaterAid on that day back in 2007, so it also marked 3 years service for me. As you can imagine, WaterAid Timor Leste was pretty busy on the day. Most of the team were in Liquiça district to support a village to declare itself Open Defecation Free (ODF), which is a key element of the CLTS approach I mentioned in this post.

An ODF declaration is an important milestone in a village’s commitment to sanitation. It is a clear public statement, complete with signboard, that “practising open defecation” (apologies for jargon, it basically means crapping in the woods) is no longer acceptable and everyone is now using a toilet, however basic. The problem, of course, is how to get people to progress from the most basic toilet to something more durable. For more info on the event, I suggest you read this article on the WaterAid Australia website by my colleague Jose Seixas.

So, most of the team were down in Liquiça, but Jose, Tofik and myself were in Dili attending the National Toilet Awards. This excellent event was organised by the Ministry of Infrastructure and BESIK (the AusAid-funded programme supporting the water supply and sanitation directorate of the Ministry). They had  mustered NGOs and private sector organisations involved in sanitation marketing from across the whole of Timor. The Vice Minister of Health was in attendance to inspect the various designs, giving some political weight to the proceedings.

Most people had the basic moulded cement pans, though prices ranged from $3-5 due to different business models and material availability. There were also some other innovative designs on show. WaterAid had supported Januario (mentioned in this post) to attend, and he brought along a few examples of a simple latrine made from a PVC pipe, and ended up winning a prize for it, which was great. The picture above shows him with part of his display. PVC is currently quite expensive here as it's imported, but prices for many materials are coming down at the moment.

These awards are great for generating interest around sanitation marketing, rewarding those entrepreneurs with good ideas, encouraging them to stick with the business and innovate more. Hopefully it will become an annual fixture. A video was made, and if it becomes available online, I’ll link to it.

I was particularly taken by the exposition of the soap-making activities supported by the Japanese NGO AFMET, who work out in Lospalos. They are helping communities produce high-quality soap made mostly from local materials like coconut oil. Their soap is also available in shops in Dili, so I’ve been using it myself. Hygiene promotion is the most cost-effective health intervention available, but hand-washing only forms a proper disease transmission barrier when soap is used. I think AFMET’s scheme is great and I’m going to try and do a full blogpost on it another time – you can read about it on the second page of this PDF.

Happy belated World Toilet Day!