Sanitation is a Human Right

The problem is Global, not Local

1.8 million dead each year because of bad sanitation and water...

Many metropolitan cities in the United States—like our own home of Salt Lake City, Utah—have populations well under one million. Take a moment to imagine what it would be like if everyone in the city you lived in died over the course of a single year. Or six months. In the United States or Europe we would declare this an epidemic or national disaster.

But what's really astonishing is that those deaths can easily be cut by one third to one half with one simple action: washing their hands using soap and water after using the toilet, and before eating or preparing meals. In half...

“Water and Sanitation is one of the primary drivers of public health. I often refer to it as “Health 101” ... Once we can secure access to clean water and to adequate sanitation facilities for all people, irrespective of the difference in their living conditions, a huge battle against all kinds of diseases will be won.”
—Dr LEE Jong-wook (1945–2006), former Director-General, World Health Organization

Not everyone has a Toilet

It's not just developing countries. This is a global issue. Both Eastern and Western hemispheres, north and south. Not everyone uses toilets around the world, and billions of people still eliminate outside in the woods or in the open—as humans have done for hundreds of thousands of years. But as the world's population increases and people are residing in increasingly crowded numbers, it's really starting to pile up.

“But diarrhoeal disease isn't such a huge problem everywhere, right?”
The difference is largely due to handwashing.

The majority of the world either does not toilet paper, or limits its use. Parts of Europe, the Middle East, and large portions of Asia use alternatives (such as bidets, lota, or similar methods) for cleaning themselves after using the toilet. It has been argued—and we cannot dispute the possibility—that these ways are often cleaner and more environmentally sustainable than the Western method.

The only point we will argue is this: it is absolutely vital to wash your hands afterward, and always use soap and water.

In some places people only rinse their hands with water, which is sometimes just as contaminated. Other times all they do is quickly scrub their hands with dirt or sand. Or wipe them on the grass.

In many parts of the world, it's not thought to be important to wash before cooking or preparing meals, thinking that their hands get clean enough while handling the food; in truth, they are contaminating the food with dangerous pathogens. In some cultures, it's only viewed as important to wash hands after eating a meal, not before.

Even educated healthcare workers and medical professionals can forget and become lax in washing after using the toilet, which is a major part of why hospital post-operative staph infections are running rampant in many parts of the world.

“Sanitation is more important than independence.”
— Mahatma Gandhi, 1925

The mission of SUM1 is pretty straightforward: bring the necessary education to the parts of the world where the problem is the worst. Teach the mothers—who collectively comprise the largest body of healthcare workers in the world—and teach the children that are the next generation. Help them to understand how correct handwashing reduces illness, and help them to make using soap and water a lifesaving habit. When necessary, we also want to help bring them access to better sanitation and water sources.

This is surprisingly affordable. Digging wells and building toilet facilities of course are both a pricey endeavor, but traveling to someplace where disease and illness run rampant and demonstrating how they can simply improve their hygiene habits is comparatively cheap. We can do a lot more with a dollar than many charities that need to raise thousands of dollars to bring aid a few hundred people.

Working together, we know we really can change the world. But we need your help to do it. Every dollar quickly adds up, just as every person who steps up to give their support adds up.

The plight of Women

The lack of safe toilet facilities effects women in these countries far more than the men. Most will do their best to wait until after dark for the sake of privacy, and because of this are often victims of sexual harassment, violence, and rape when they must venture out alone.

Another issue for women throughout the developing world is a lack of education about menstruation. Centuries of superstition often surround this natural biological function, and younger women often lack the knowledge of exactly what is happening to their bodies. It leads to girls missing school more than boys, and inevitably to their dropping out of educational programs.

Women in the developing world also face limited or no supplies to comfortably and safely manage their monthlies and will use sand, husks, dirty old cloths, or even ash to try and contain it – a practice which often leads to infections that can cripple or kill. There are safe solutions and education that can be tailored to the cultures that have this problem, and SUM1 brings this information as well to improve the lives of these women.

When you take the time to explain the biology of menstruation—that there is nothing evil or wrong with it—you empower women who sometimes have lived with shame their entire lives. When you show them how easy it is to create a reusable, washable pad you give them hope.

All the money from your donations—100%, every penny—will go toward project interventions around the world to help the people we're reaching out to. We're not being paid a dime from what you send us, and we're even going to pay all the card processing and transaction fees out of our operational funds. We're that committed—and we feel it's just the right way to do this kind of thing.More about this

“Why should I care?”

Fair question. Chances are, you're reading this online. Meaning you have access to a computer and the internet. So it's also likely you have access to clean water, toilets in every home and business, to soap and cleansers that make sure that your kitchen isn't infested with bacteria and vermin. That you have a job where you make more in a day than many people do in a month. That you have a car, that you can get emergency healthcare, that you aren't likely to be attacked by wild dogs or snakes if you have to go outside at night to relieve yourself. That you have electricity and your day doesn't essentially end when the sun goes down because candles are too expensive to burn at night. That you can spend more on a cup of coffee than the people who grew those coffee beans spend on food in a whole day.

But I promise, we're really not trying to make you feel guilty. We're just stating the facts. We're just pointing out that you've probably got it pretty good, just as we've got it good. The difference is that now, we here at SUM1 know just how good we've really got it. As much as we all might complain about the rising cost of gas or the Blue Screen of Death, those are First World problems. Yeah, you might have gotten passed over for that promotion and you might need to refinance your mortgage; not all of us First Worlders are doing great. There's a lot of unemployment right now, the cost of living keeps climbing, and we have many homeless citizens. But if you take just a moment to consider, you simply being able to read this website probably means that you're probably among the richest five percent of people in the entire world. Even though we know it maybe doesn't always feel like that.

So we're not asking a lot of you. If you can give a buck, please do. I mean, we can all give a buck, right? Look at that coffee cup you're holding. Maybe you can skip going back for a refill from the barista today and give five bucks. Maybe next week you can pack leftovers for lunch and instead of going to the steakhouse or that burger joint every day, you can save ten bucks to help someone else.

 Click here to Donate — even if it's just a Buck! 

If you really, really can't afford to give much money, give us some of your time. Just spread the word about us with your friends and family on Facebook, or write a blog entry about this page. Click to tweet about us if you're on Twitter. Send five people to us, and we bet at least one of them can help out. If you can volunteer to donate your time and energy to us, drop us an email and tell us how you'd like to help.

When we all work together, we are greater than the sum of our parts. We can do some really great things out there. We can all be SUM1.

“Those who have the privilege to know have the duty to act.” — Albert Einstein

Making a donation to Sum1

If you clicked the link to make a donation to SUM1, I gotta say you are awesome for doing that.

And in the meantime, we can still use everyone's help: blog about us, like us on Facebook, check out the plus1ndia blog and follow it for updates. Tweet about us to your friends, and just spread the word in general. Send everyone here to sum1.org and start the buzz.

Click this link to tweet about us.

If you live in Salt Lake City, Utah or close by and you want to volunteer some of your time and energy to us, send us an email. We already have a lot of amazing people giving their hard work to us to help make this into a monumental, world-wide effort.

And if you have a rich uncle–or even better if you are a rich uncle!–we can also use some help with administrative costs. See, we decided early on that all the money we raise through donations to SUM1—seriously, every thin dime—will only go to help the people we're reaching out to around the world. Which means we here at "SUM1 Mission Control" are donating our own time, money, and personal resources to making this happen, and we aren't getting paid for it.

We need some money for basic administrative costs like advertising, office supplies, and maybe one day even some reasonable salaries for putting our time into this. We have a strong need for separate corporate sponsorship and grants in order to pay for all this stuff. If you are able and willing to help with that, please please do drop us a line and let us know how you can help in that regard as well.