Blog#1: Why Toilets = Education

This is an article I found about John Kluge and his partner Michael Lindenmayer who are Co-Chief Toilet Hackers. These men along with their partners, such as the Water for People organization, are taking on the issue of sanitation across the globe. John Kluge says "Be thankful. You have a toilet. 2.5 Billion people do not. This is a big deal. You need to know this shit". This past December, John and Michael hosted a hackathon with over 1250 innovators to help come up with a solution for solving this problem with sanitation and girls attendance at schools. Sanitation is a big problem for girls in other countries. The articles states that in one survey 23 percent of Indian school-aged girls dropped out of school when they reached puberty. Often their families encourage the girls to just stay home and get married. But thanks to the hackathon that was put together, 181 prototypes were built for 130 sanitation-related problems over the course of 48 hours and these prototypes are going to be tested in the field. This was step one in the initiative to fix this social issue. They also plan to launch subsequent hackathons that address behavior change towards the issue.


I found this article very interesting because it shows a global social issue that's impacting a large number of people but it also showed people who are standing up and making a difference and helping to solve this issue. Before reading this article I knew that many people around the world do not have toilets but I never thought of the devastating effects that can have on a society, especially for girls and their education. Being a girl myself there is no way I could even imagine having to go without proper and clean sanitation. Another aspect I found interesting about the article was how they also want to address behavior changes towards the issue. Many people find toilets and natural body processes a touchy subject or for the ones that don't have the toilets, it can make them feel shamed.They want people to feel comfortable talking about these issues so that maybe we can fix them.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/deniserestauri/2013/01/03/why-toilets-not-cell-phones-are-key-to-education-around-the-world/