English Lakes Hotels join Toilet Twinning campaign for overseas sanitation
Howard Lake | 11 August 2014 | News
Staff at English Lakes Hotels Resorts & Venues have joined forces with Toilet Twinning, a campaign to raise money to provide proper toilets, clean water and hygiene education for poor communities around the world.
Toilet Twinning takes the notion of town twinning in which cities, towns and regions are twinned with other places around the world, to promote international cultural and business links, and uses it to promote better sanitation for all.
How does Toilet Twinning work?
Donations by staff and customers pay for the construction of latrines in poor communities. In return, the hotels receive certificates with photographs of their twinned latrines to display in the more luxurious surroundings of their hotel toilets. They now have a total of 16 photographs hanging in their hotel toilet facilities.
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Dan Wilson from Low Wood Bay Watersports Centre introduced the English Lakes Hotels Resorts & Ventures group to the idea of twinning toilets.
He said:
“This is a great way for us to make a little bit of a difference, as well as reminding people in our own country how fortunate we all are to have clean water and far greater opportunities for good health.
“For each donation, we can twin our loos with purpose-built latrines in countries as far afield as Bangladesh, Burundi, The Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia or Nepal. Whenever we twin a toilet, we receive a certificate and photo of the twin facility, the latrine’s location and its GPS coordinates so we can even look it up on Google Maps.”
Toilet Twinning CEO Lorraine Kingsley added: “It’s appalling that so many people worldwide still lack access to essentials such a proper loo – especially as deaths related to diarrhoea are easily prevented with simple, low-cost solutions.
“We’re so grateful to English Lakes Hotels Resorts & Venues for their support and for helping spread awareness of the global sanitation crisis in this way: toilets are the one place you can almost guarantee people will read a certificate!”
About Toilet Twinning
Toilet Twinning is a partnership between development charities Cord and Tearfund, to enable people living in poor communities to have clean water, a decent toilet, and to learn about hygiene – a vital combination that prevents the spread of disease and reduces the number of deaths among children.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.