The German Toilet Organization (GTO), in cooperation with Women in Europe for a Common Future (WECF) and the GIZ program “Sustainable sanitation – ecosan”, offers two training courses (basic and advanced) in Germany for NGO workers and interested parties who want to acquire or deepen their knowledge on sustainable sanitation and the planning and implementation of sanitation projects.

The basic course “Toilets for schools and public buildings in developing countries” (PDF; 0.2 MB) takes place on 11-12 February 2012 in Iffeldorf, near Munich and the advanced course on “Sustainable solutions for sanitation in developing and countries in transition” (PDF; 0.2 MB) takes place on 3-4 March 2012 in Berlin. Both courses will be held in German.

“Each card corresponds to the one of technologies listed in the Compendium and can be printed out in a large format for group work, presentations or games. (…) By printing out each technology on a coloured card, you can build a colour-coded set of technologies to visualize, build and modify sanitation systems. Laminated cards made of heavy coloured paper can be used for games, taped to walls or held by group members as they select and link technologies into a feasible system.”

Great!

“Any actions taken to improve sanitation and hygiene – from building a toilet to teaching children to wash their hands with soap – are Good Dignity Practices. These bring economic benefits and improve dignity. Find out how you can become involved in GDP for GDP and help turn shit into gold.”

To find out more about this campaign and why the Water Supply & Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC) decided to come up with this one (after a very successful in 2001), please head over to the campaign’s website and have a look at this brilliant campaign material!

“An estimated 2.6 billion people, about 40% of the world’s population, have no access to toilets and defecate anywhere they can. As a result, more than 2 million people — including 1.5 million children — die from complications of chronic diarrhea.

When human waste isn’t contained or flushed down the toilet, it’s everywhere — in streets, open fields and, most dangerously, in the very water people drink. Adam investigates how countries are trying to solve an epidemic that few people want to talk about — the world’s toilet crisis.”

This documentary was aired on CurrentTV in September 2010 and has since generated quite a few interesting comments. Also includes footage on the work of the World Toilet Organization (WTO) via Jack Sim, as well as a light introduction to Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS).

Site highlights include:

• Cutting-edge information on 30+ WASH-related topics
• Details on WSSCC’s in-country work through its coalitions and the Global Sanitation Fund
• User-contributed sanitation, hygiene and water supply success stories
• A powerful, contextual search engine and access to our experts
• Member’s-only area with discussion forums, key documents and networking/search functions
• Online advocacy resources
• Publications and other resources in English, French and Spanish

If you’re active in this sector and feel like contributing, I encourage you to register with them and participate on this global platform. Thank you & see you there!

Oh, and more content in Spanish and French will be made available in Q1 of 2011.

This very fine and recently launched website is said to be “the most comprehensive collection of tools and approaches to improve water resources management sanitation at a local level”, because:

• It follows a holistic and cross-sectoral approach
• It addresses and integrates different stakeholders
• It contains understandable and manageable contents
• It is user and problem specific
• It has a high standard and pedagogic approach
• It links planning, software and technology
• It provides ready-to-use and adjustable material

In addition to this toolbox, there are regular training courses that build on the SSWM Toolbox and aim at linking up sustainable sanitation, water management and agriculture at the local level and in practice. Upcoming training courses will take place in Nagarkot (Kathmandu), Nepal and Pune, India.

Also, I am particularly pleased that material published in the SSWM Toolbox for the first time is attributed with a CC-BY-3.0 licence which shows that online knowledge management is indeed possible with such a (modern) copyleft licence.

It is against this background that I would like to forward you to this interesting post on gender and toilets (also here because of the additional comments) as there’s still a complete world full of such unsolved gender issues.

Fortunately, or at least that’s what I think, any debate on toilets (~sanitation, ~hygiene, ~privacy, ~comfort, etc.) is good & a way forward into the right direction. So if it takes a gender issue like the rather unfortunate (or not?) seperation into women’s and men’s washrooms for people to return talking about toilets, then we’re one step closer to an improved sanitation. Do you agree?

Social media, online stuff – where’s the real action you ask?

Well, here it is:

The World’s Longest Toilet Queue Flickr Stream.

Enjoy!

“The guiding vision of Global Handwashing Day is a local and global culture of handwashing with soap. Although people around the world wash their hands with water, very few wash their hands with soap at the critical occasions.”

There even is a dedicated website for this cause with further information on why we actually need a Global Handwashing Day:

“Handwashing with soap is the most effective and inexpensive way to prevent diarrheal and acute respiratory infections, which take the lives of millions of children in developing countries every year. Together, they are responsible for the majority of all child deaths. Yet, despite its lifesaving potential, handwashing with soap is seldom practiced and difficult to promote. (…) A vast change in handwashing behavior is critical to meeting the Millennium Development Goal of reducing deaths among children under the age of five by two-thirds by 2015.”

Have you already washed your hands with soap today?

Have you ever come to a point where you are challenged with the recent issues on sanitation in the world? Have you ever asked yourself questions like: “How have I contributed to sanitation problems today?; How can I contribute in solving sanitation problems?; Am I an enemy of sanitation? ” Or perhaps you probably had ask more questions than me…

So much for that, I just want to share one video I found on the internet about Ecosan Waterless Toilets: