Toilet Twinning at St Osmund's

Lydia Topp, school chaplain, writes: 

In our world two in ten people live without the access to a toilet. This causes illness, sickness, and unclean water, which then leads on to cause more issues. We would like to twin all of our 49 toilets to allow 49 communities to have access to a toilet, and also a person that will educate the community in washing hands, and basic hygiene. 

We will be doing this with the help of Toilet Twinning. Earlier this term, we launched our fundraising the week of Valentine's day with our "Love your loo raffle".   Local businesses donated some amazing prizes.  This then motivated Poppy to organise her own cake sale in her local village, to help raise money to twin our toilets.  We are continuing to run more events throughout this term with "Wear Blue for the Loo" day on 1 April. We will also be setting up our display toilets in reception area and inviting pupils to come and "spend their pennies" in the toilets to boost our fundraising efforts.  

At St Osmund's we live by our Christian values, and we are driven by a part of our school verse for this project, "no one left out, no one left behind".  We have been in touch with our local MP Chris Loader who is in full support of our project.  If we can reach 50 toilets, he will place the extra certificate of the twinned toilet in the Palace of Westminster.   

Each toilet is going to cost £60 to twin, so we are looking at raising £3000. We just hope our little school can make the difference to pupils in countries where parents have had to pay for medical bills for illnesses that have been caused by not having a clean and safe toilet or education.  It's a simple thing that we take for granted, that we could help change.