Media Advisory: World Toilet Day cause for celebration

["Lesley Crosson" <LCrosson@churchworldservice.org>]

Media Contacts:
Lesley Crosson/Church World Service, +011 212 870-2676,
lcrosson@churchworldservice.org
Jan Dragin – 24/7 – +011 781 925-1526, jdragin@gis.net
In Serbia and Moldova: Vitali Vorona, CWS Europe, or Tom Hampson, CWS
USA, mobile: +011 209 402-9908
 
 
 
MEDIA ADVISORY
 
One eco-tech toilet: cause for celebration in this Moldovan village
school
 
Ceremony heralds World Toilet Day
 
 
HASNASENII MARI, Moldova – Wednesday, November 16, 2011 -- Kids
attending school in the small, northern Moldova village of Hasnasenii
Mari will be celebrating their school’s first toilet at a special
ceremony this Friday (November 18) -- and the region’s first green-tech,
eco-friendly toilet, at that.
 
The new urine diverting dry toilet (UDDT), or composting toilet, will
be the first of its kind in northern Moldova – inaugurated a day before
World Toilet Day. The device, which does not require water flushing, is
being introduced in the community as a sustainable sanitation option to
serve some 250 pupils at the school.
 
More of the composting toilets are planned for schools in the region
and are seen as a hygienic and environmentally sound toilet solution in
areas where centralized systems aren’t realistic,  They are part of a
wider water and sanitation program being rolled out in Moldova by
international humanitarian agency Church World Service, in cooperation
with Women in Europe for the Common Future (WECF).
 
WHAT, WHERE, WHEN:
 
A ceremony celebrating the school’s new installation 
Friday, November 18 
Hasnasenii Mari village, Drochia district
Northern Moldova
1:30 PM local time
 
*** The event is open to media. Interviews at the site or via mobile
phone with participants and spokespeople are available by arrangement.
Translators available as needed.
 
Guests for the installation’s ceremony have come from as far away as
Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Illinois and Indiana in the U.S. 
 
The American visitors, who have been in Serbia and Moldova since last
week [November 9], are staff members from several Church World Service
regional offices in the U.S.
 
In Moldova, the poorest country in Europe, over 60 percent of school
age children are at risk of falling ill due to bad sanitation conditions
in schools. 

 
"Access to clean water is one of the main problems facing the
population," Dr. Vitali Vorona, CWS regional representative for Europe,
told his American colleagues.
 
Vorona says almost all of the 900 villages in Moldova have serious
problems in accessing clean drinking water and sanitation systems. In
rural areas like Hasnasenii Mari, household latrines, not toilets, are
the norm.
 
“It’s almost ironic,” said CWS’s Tom Hampson, of Elkhart, Indiana,
“that, here in struggling Moldova, a modest little rural school with
so few resources should be introducing sanitation facilities that are
increasingly becoming a leading edge green technology choice in far more
developed countries.
 
In the U.S., composting toilets are now finding their way beyond
highway rest areas and state parks and into the bathrooms of more
progressive, eco-thinking homeowners who want to live sustainably and
off the grid.  Indeed, the school’s new “green” toilet is in company
with some of the pricier, futuristic international eco-hotel offerings.
 
“Clean, sustainable water and sanitation resources are a key issue for
Church World Service,” says Vorona. “And here in Moldova, it is a
particularly vital concern.” Over 60% of school-age children in Moldova
are at risk of falling ill due to bad sanitation conditions in schools.
 
Earlier this year, during World Water Week, CWS’s Vorona presented at
the Chisinau March 22 conference “Implementation of the Human Right to
Water and Sanitation in Moldova,” which focused on the international
Protocol on Water and Health. Vorona says that Moldova’s water supply
and sewerage systems have degraded to the degree that “up to 45 percent

of the population uses drinking water that does not comply with sanitary
standards.”
 
Church World Service implements water and sanitation projects and
supports food security, education, livelihoods training and human rights
initiatives in both Moldova and Serbia, in collaboration with its
network of local partner organizations.
 
Church World Service
475 Riverside Drive
New York, NY 10115
(212) 870-2676