MENSTRAVAGANZA #MHDay

WASH United, the international social impact organization that “combines the power of sports superstars, interactive games and positive communication to excite people about sanitation and practicing good hygiene” just wrapped up its 28-day campaign dedicated to shedding more light on menstruation and Menstrual Hygiene Mangement (MHM):

Menstravaganza

May #MENSTRAVAGANZA Day 28: BIG NEWS! Today wraps up our 28-day campaign dedicated to shedding more light on menstruation & MHM. THANKS FOR ALL YOUR SUPPORT! WASH United, together with amazing global partners, announces that it will make May 28th a globally-recognised Menstrual Hygiene Day. Will you join us in supporting #MHDay?

(src: WASH United FB page)

Yes, of course! MHM is such an important and often still neglected hygiene issue that we urgently need to keep the conversations going – beyond this 28-day campaign. Online and offline.

Please also be reminded that the Sustainable Sanitation Alliance (SuSanA) dedicated a category on its forum to this matter where professional conversations on everything around MHM are already taking place. A few scientists and activists exchanging ideas online certainly won’t be enough, which is why this idea of celebrating May 28th as an international Menstravangaza Day is a smart move.

What I really like about WASH United (the link opens their very active Facebook group) and why their work matters to me: our target group (the people) usually doesn’t pay attention to scientists, but they do hear what superstars say. Remember Angelina Jolie’s preventive double mastectomy? Right. Now, if we can achieve a similar open conversation on MHM the way we are now already talking about (the lack of decent) toilets or mastectomy, then we may have achieved more than what could probably be done via the usual top-down approaches in dev aid.

Let’s put the “men” in Menstravaganza!

P.S.: Did you know there’s an online museum on Menstruation? It’s called “Museum of Menstruation & Women’s Health“. Oh, and the Menstrupedia is also very informative!

Caution: Cholera!

The following post by guest blogger Thilo Panzerbieter of the German Toilet Organization (GTO) refers to the GTO activities during WWD2013:

gto_weltwassertag13_130322_IMG_4165_jr

On this year’s World Water Day, 200 school pupils from five schools assembled at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate and confronted Germany’s Federal Minister of Development, Dirk Niebel, with “dirty water”, placards and various other diplays. This provocative gesture intended to remind Niebel that 783 million people still live without access to clean water and 2.5 billion have no adequate sanitation. Continue reading “Caution: Cholera!”

EUR 50k award up for grabs in international appropriate tech competition

With the “empowering people. Award”, the Siemens Stiftung (Siemens Foundation) would like to identify efficient technical solutions which empower people in developing and emerging countries to independently combat existential problems in basic supply.

“empowering people. Award”

The Stiftung is calling out to inventors and developers from all regions worldwide and invites them to enter simple and appropriate technical products and solutions in the categories Water & Waste Water, Energy, Waste Management & Recycling, Health, Food & Agriculture, Housing & Construction, and Information & Communication Technology. Continue reading “EUR 50k award up for grabs in international appropriate tech competition”

new discussion forum on sustainable sanitation

The Sustainable Sanitation Alliance, of which this blog on sanitation is a member, recently came up with a new forum on their server to drive discussions and open exchange on (sustainable) sanitation and hygiene to an open platform.

All registered users of the Sustainable Sanitation Alliance (anyone can become a member!) may contribute to the forum, and the reason for posting this here is to focus your attention on this forum. Contrary to a lot of other sites on the internet that are either hidden or locked up from the public, the forum is free and open. Also, there’s no ultimate solution in knowledge management. Discussions take place on Facebook walls, in LinkedIn or Facebook groups, within old-fashioned mailing lists and even at the comment section on YouTube section. You can’t control this. But you can offer attractive alternatives – like this new forum. Yay!

So if you haven’t already, please join this new forum and contribute some content. The internet is all about sharing knowledge – think of The Khan AcademyThe Open Source Ecology group or even the Appropedia wiki. And while I believe in distributed and accessible knowledge, I – at the same time – also prefer to have one single resource for collected knowledge on one specific topic (like sustainable sanitation and appropriate hygiene management). This forum is my preferred choice for the discussion part.

Good Dignity Practices for Gross Domestic Product

Good Dignity Practices for Gross Domestic Product, or “GDP for GDP”, is a new WSSCC Global WASH Campaign that tries to help in advocating for sanitation and hygiene investments by providing us (the campaigners) with tools such as the following poster:

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!