The19th November 2009 is World Toilet Day, a day to raise awareness of the global sanitation situation and to celebrate something many of us take for granted: a toilet.

The Sanitation Challenge
Imagine what it would be like without a toilet – the inconvenience, the embarrassment, and, last but not least, the effects on our health of not disposing of our ‘shit’ safely. More than a third of the global population are faced with exactly this situation. An estimated 2.5 billion people do not currently have access to a safe, private and hygienic toilet and the wide-spread practice of open defecation results in a lot of disease and death in the developing world. According to the World Toilet Organisation, 1.8 million people, 90 per cent% of whom are children under the age of five, die from fecally-transmitted diseases every year. Moreover, diarrhoea in children under the age of two can have irreversible debilitating effects such as stunted growth.

To mark the occasion, we have a special feature on the CLTS website:
Read about the Regional Workshop on CLTS in the South East Asia and Pacific Region which took place in Phnom Penh, Cambodia last week. Listen to participants reflect on the workshop, their learning and the key challenges they see for CLTS in their countries.

See how other communities celebrated

• Find out why many communities in Kenya have reason to celebrate World Toilet Day in a short “update from Plan Kenya

• Read how a small community in Burkina Faso celebrated World Toilet Day (in English and French)