How Are YOU Going to Celebrate World Toilet Day?

World Toilet Day sounds like it might be a kind of joke. You know, "all sorts of things have their own day now! Talk Like a Pirate Day, Bosses Day, there's probably even a Toilet Day!"

Well there is a World Toilet Day, and every year since 2001, it has been November 19^th. It may sound silly (who doesn't turn into a five year old at the mention of a potty?), but it's actually deadly serious. It was first created by the World Toilet Organization to increase awareness of sanitation needs across the world. In 2013 the UN officially recognized World Toilet Day as an important informational tool to get the word out and raise money for toilets.

Why would the UN need to raise money for toilets? What you may not know is that 1 billion people live their entire lives without having access to a toilet. This means any kind of toilet what-so-ever, not an outhouse, a pit latrine, or a hole in the ground. This means that when it's time for them to relieve themselves it looks something like this:

or this:

Another 1.5 billion people across the globe do have some toilet facility, but it's highly rudimentary, or it's dangerously positioned. Maybe their waste goes into a river, the same river they use as a drinking source. Maybe the latrine is far from their houses, and dangerous to reach in the dark.

This is a serious health hazard. Simple diarrhea kills as many as 2,000 children every day. This is more children than killed by malaria, aids, and accidental injuries combined.

Supposing a child survives to go to school, he or she then has to sit all day simply "holding it" or go in a nearby field, if possible. When a girl undergoes menarche she often stops going to school, simply because it is too difficult to manage her menses without privacy. Even then, however, women who engage in open defecation are vulnerable to rape. There are no good statistics for how often a woman is raped while relieving herself, but 1 in 3 women are raped at least once in their lives world-wide, and it cannot be wholly coincidental that this same statistic, 1 in 3, is the number of women who do not have access to a safe toilet. Rape statistics are always higher when the crime can be convicted conveniently, and when there is little fear of reprisal. Because of this rates of rape in the developed world appear artificially higher than in mostly rural, poorer countries. If every rape was recorded the numbers of rapes by strangers in communities where open deification is practiced, would almost certainly rival the numbers of date rapes in the US and UK. Anything that can be done to reduce this dangerously high statistic, should be done.

Everyone who is suffering due to a lack of proper toilet facilities is a person. A person with a mother and a father, friends, relatives; they are a person with a mind and ideas. Every time a child dies because of diarrhea, a person is wasted, every woman who gets raped because of unsafe facilities she is scarred physiologically, sometimes physically, and possibly prevented from doing something amazing. If she had a safe place to go at a school, she could complete an education, resulting in a better life for her and her future family. History has shown, over and over, that when the powerful and rich help those without, everyone benefits. What's more, clean, safe toilets increase the economy, by saving money otherwise wasted on treating fecal borne diseases.  Save lives, save minds, improve the world forever. 

If you want to help, you can contribute directly to the World Toilet Organization, here. 

Like Matt Damon? Donate to his organization Water.org, here. 

Don't have any spare cash? (and just a little bit will help) Write to your House Representative in support of the Water for the World Act. The House Foreign Affairs Committee is discussing it November 20^th, that's tomorrow. Let him or her know that you, a voter, care about world sanitation. Here's the handy House.gov page for finding out how to contact your representative. 

If you're looking for more facts, here's the fast fact sheet from the CDC, and here's the UN Human Rights Commission website on the Right of Sanitation given to all of us. And find out more about different kinds of toilets, with the toilet field guide.

And no matter what, talk about this. Tell people the facts, tweet about it, post on Facebook, Instagram, whatever. Take a picture of your toilet, post it, and celebrate that you have a safe, healthy place to go, and you can take it for granted while 2.5 billion people can't.

Here are my toilets, I'm extremely grateful to have them. I use both of them, several times a day, and I almost never have to think about them. The one in the big bathroom is a bit temperamental, but it works, and if I ever get around to it, fixing it will be really easy. The other one is in a half bath off my bedroom. I have a special toilet that I can use, in the middle of the night, just so I don't have to go down the hall. Seriously, I'm a rich woman.