The Big Deal About Bathrooms
Access to safe drinking water and sanitation is a fundamental need and human right, yet millions of men, women, and children around the world have neither. We’ve seen this need first hand in Peru where we’ve been working with the local community for almost 10 years to help provide safe drinking water and hygiene training. But we’ve also seen first hand the life-changing effects of people having access to that safe drinking water.
The statistics are truly daunting and it’s easy to be utterly overwhelmed by them. As individuals, it seems like there’s no way we can help solve the problem… but together? Together, we can do this! Together, we can make a difference!
Although our main water focus has been installing and supporting large water systems that ensure entire communities have easy access to safe water, we’ve also spent the past two years developing and testing an ecologically-friendly bathroom that withstands the jungle climate, fits the culture, and is safe, sustainable… and remarkably affordable. We’ve already financed several of these bathrooms and have been blown away by the reports from the families who gladly acted as our guinea pigs.
Check out this video to see for yourselves the shocking way that some people live… and the impact something as simple as a bathroom can have on the lives of those who have never had one.
How the bathrooms work
The free-standing bathrooms are the brainchild of a couple of extremely smart engineers – Timo and Maria Laura Hidalgo – in Pucallpa, Peru, who are passionate about using the knowledge and skills they have to improve the lives of the people they’re surrounded by… the people who have nothing and who have been marginalized for far too long.
Each bathroom serves a single family, providing sanitation, privacy, and dignity. Rainwater is collected from the roof of their home and stored in a water tank above the bathroom to be used for showering and washing hands, as well as to provide safe drinking water in the home once filtered. There’s a sink for handwashing on the outside of each bathroom, and a shower, urinal, and toilet on the inside. The toilet is a dry toilet and, with the help of sawdust/dry leaves and a locally available enzyme, human waste is transformed into safe compost to use in farming. This makes these bathrooms sustainable with no ground or water contamination.
The bathrooms are lightweight, transportable, and unbelievably durable. Consequently, they’re just as easily installed in the city as they are in the jungle.
In each home, we also install a two-bucket water filter system, providing the family with safe drinking water. Alongside the new bathroom and this in-home water filtration system, each family also receives valuable water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) training to ensure long-term health, as well as regular home visits to answer any questions they may have regarding the upkeep and maintenance of their bathroom and filter system.
How you can help
Each bathroom costs just $2,500 (this includes the bathroom, the enzymes, the in-home water filtration system, the health and hygiene training, and the home visits). That’s a small price to pay to change the life of an entire family for ever!
Think you can’t help? Think again…
Would you, your employer, or your organization donate $2,500 to provide what amounts to so much more than a bathroom to a family in need?
Would you create a peer-to-peer fundraising campaign, inviting friends, family, and colleagues to join you in funding a bathroom? Birthdays, graduations, anniversaries, Mother’s Day, and Father’s Day make the perfect opportunity for this… but don’t feel like you need to wait for a special occasion!
We’d love to have you be part of this venture and to know first hand that you’re changing lives!
Latrine or bathroom… you choose!
