After several weeks of brainstorming, we decided to drop the idea of having a public run. The run was generating a lot of interest in general, but not as much from the communities who are severely affected by lack of sanitation. So here’s what we plan to do instead: We had a chance meeting with an NGO called Pudiyador in Chennai. Pudiyador works with underprivileged children across five centres in Chennai to provide after-school learning. We are really excited to have met these kids and an opportunity to be a part of their lives.

You might want to ask: Why children?

Here’s why: According to the United Nations, a child dies every 2 and a half minute from preventable diarrhoeal diseases cause by lack of improved sanitation. Poor sanitation kills more children than AIDS, malaria and measles combined. Lack of sanitation in schools forces children to stay away from formal education. This is especially true for girl children who have special sanitation needs once they hit puberty.

As part of our World Toilet Day celebrations, we have interactive knowledge workshops on water, sanitation and hygiene on November 14 and November 21, 2015 with the kids. The learning from the workshops will also be shared with the parents and the neighboring community at large on Nov 21, 2015. We hope that through these workshops, we can share important messages on hygiene, hand-washing and toilet use with children and also use the event as a platform to learn from them!

We have an online campaign starting October 30, 2015. The online campaign will invite people from all walks of life to talk about their toilet/water/hygiene stories through interesting pictures, videos and blogposts. Interested bloggers can send in their entries to hapeecommode@gmail.com.

The Hapee Commode has generous partners, groups and individuals who have come forward to contribute their time and energy to this event. We thanks them for their support.

The list (in no particular order) is as below:

The World Toilet Organization, Singapore

World Toilet Organization is a global non-profit committed to improving toilet and sanitation conditions worldwide. We believe in empowering individuals through education, training and building local marketplace opportunities to advocate for clean and safe sanitation facilities in their communities. For more: http://worldtoilet.org/ and http://urgentrun.com/

Pudiyador

Pudiyador’s vision is to empower underprivileged sections of Indian society, primarily through an education program that fosters intellectual, social and cultural development of the children.

Triple O Studio

Triple O Studio is working on exciting art installations for the campaign that can be viewed in public spaces during the International World Toilet Day Week!

Triple O Studio is a multi-disciplinary collaborative platform with the core team qualified to do Master-planning, Urban Design, Architecture and Interior design; providing creative design solutions pertaining to all project scales.

Prajnya Trust

For the event, Prajnya will be collecting stories from the field and sharing it with the residents. They are also providing coordination and content support for the campaign. Prajnya is a non-profit centre for research, public education and networking working on issues related to peace, justice and security.

Smitten

Smitten is providing branding and creative design support for the online and print campaign. Smitten is a creative services studio that specializes in graphic design and brand consultancy.

Alicia Souza

Alicia Souza will be doing a lovely illustration with interesting facts and figures on sanitation.

Alicia Souza works from her studio in Bangalore, India. She is currently working as a freelance illustrator and entrepreneur of her company that manufactures gifting and artist merchandise under her label. Her work has also been licensed by various companies.

Inedible India

Inedible India will be sharing interesting comic strips to spread awareness on sanitation.

Bharat Subbaraman, Freelance Photographer

Bharat will be sharing his professional photographs of the city along with some interesting messages on sanitation.

Okapi

Okapi is an India-based research and consulting group focused on institutional design for complex goals in changing times. We help our clients create policies, ecosystems, and organizations that motivate and aggregate individual contributions to broader public purposes.

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In the next couple of weeks, we will have new partners and contributors. The above list will be periodically updated on our webpage. We really apologize if your name doesn’t appear here.