Two-and-a-half billion people around the world don’t have access to proper sanitation.
Groups around the globe, from Australia to Zimbabwe, are hosting programs to draw attention to the international problem.
WUWM Environmental Reporter Susan Bence found two women in Milwaukee who’ve joined the cause.
Venice Williams is no stranger to “good causes.” But when I meet her in the Good Shepherd Lutheran Church basement, she’s having a hard time engaging her urban 4H club in a discussion about World Toilet Day. The 7 to 17 year olds would rather be eating pizza.
“As we wait for our food, we’re going to go right into planning for The Big Squat, which fits right into our pledge for better living, for my club, my community and my world,” Williams says.
No reaction - so Williams tries another approach. She asks everyone who went to the bathroom today to stand up.
“Sit down if you had to stoop where someone else had already gone to the bathroom today and there was quite a bit of evidence that they had gone to the bathroom. Was that enough without being graphic,” Williams says.
Williams tells the group as many as 5,000 children around the world die every day from unsafe water and a lack of basic sanitation facilities. An uncomfortable silence fills the air. Williams got the kids’ attention.
“Why do you think we don’t get involved I things like this,” Williams asks.
“Because it’s not our everyday reality,” one of the kids responds.
The kids warm up and start coming up with games, involving toilet paper and water, to get the attention of more kids.
Gigi Pomerantz will be helping the 4Her group get the point across tonight.
The nurse practitioner says she didn’t learn about the problem until a few years ago, when a church group invited her to help at a clinic in Haiti. They traveled to Duchity, a village in the remote mountains of the south.
“And then we spent a week doing clinic and saw that everybody needed to be treated for intestinal parasites,” Pomerantz says.
Pomerantz learned that 84 percent of Haiti’s rural regions have no access to sanitation.
“Now I’ve seen with my own eyes where people are actually going: the beach; by the side of the road; in their fields where they’re planting peas. So you think don’t they dig like a big hole or something like that,” Pomerantz says.
She answers her own question. Setting up a traditional latrine is expensive and Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.
So, Pomerantz immersed herself in learning about practical toilet facilities and how to raise money to build them. At the same time, she recruited a Haitian man who works at the village school.
“And I said you need to put together a grassroots group, it can’t be just you and me. It can’t be a white woman from North America coming into do this work,” Pomerantz says.
The man turned to the young people of Duchity who formed the group, “Progressive Youth Organization for the Development of Duchity.” Over the last two years, Its 60 members have constructed five public toilets in the village, the first at the local primary school.
Pomerantz describes the toilets as dry composting units built above ground.
“And you have special kind of toilet bowl which is made from a fiberglass mold. The urine is collected in a tank in back and is diluted, three to one, as fertilizer in the garden,” Pomerantz says.
The solid waste is sealed and stored, allowing it to decompose.
“And then after sitting a year, it’s applied as fertilizer in the garden and that can increase crop yields seven times,” Pomerantz says.
Pomerantz says the food that’s cultivated will help tackle another problem in Haiti – hunger.
If all goes well, fruit trees will eventually help provide more food. They’re an offshoot of a latrine system called the Arborloo.
“A shallow pit, a meter deep approximately, with a small concrete cover,” Pomerantz says.
Perfect for a family’s needs. When the pit is full, Pomerantz says it’s topped off with soil and a fruit tree.
“They’ll eventually have an orchard,” Pomerantz says.
Pomerantz admits she and the Haitian youth group have been learning as they go along.
“Initially we were just building toilets…but now we have developed pretty much a comprehensive program,” Pomerantz says.
The nurse added a three-part hygiene course to teach the basics. Pomerantz says the Haitian villagers are eager to learn.
“We teach them they can use ash instead of soap if they can’t afford soap,” Pomerantz says..
During her last visit, Pomerantz taught a young Haitian woman to take over the classes.
“That’s the goal; I want to be here and raise money and have them be able to do the projects,” Pomerantz says.
She says the Haitian youth group’s motto is “Men anpil chay pa lou.” That means “many hands make the load lighter.”
That’s the message Venice Williams will convey at the Big Squat event in Milwaukee tonight.
Her 4Hers are going to put together hygiene kits to send to places like Duchity.
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