Wherever the Need Puts Sanitation First

Around the world, 2.6 billion people still don't have access to a toilet. Without toilets, water is polluted with sewage, spreading illness and disease. In fact, poor sanitation kills more people than HIV/AIDS, malaria, and measles combined – every 17 seconds, a child dies from a sanitation-related illness. Those who are most affected by this issue are some of the world's poorest. And when they are sick, they are unable to work or go to school, thus remaining trapped in poverty.

Wherever the Need is working to alleviate poverty by focusing on sanitation. The charity was founded in 1997 by David Crosweller and Andrew Barrs to provide humanitarian aid to those in need. Over the next eight years, Wherever the Need learned that the underlying cause of poverty was poor health due to lack of sanitation. In 2005, the organization was introduced to a long-term solution to the problem: ecological sanitation, or ecosan for short. Since then, Wherever the Need has focused on providing ecosan, clean water, and livelihood programs that allow people to find their own way out of poverty and improve their lives.

Ecosan toilets are toilets that make compost, turning waste into something useful. Capturing waste also prevents raw sewage from being dumped into water sources and the local environment, limiting contamination and the spread of disease. Ecosan toilets can be used for decades and do not require any sewer infrastructure, making them ideal for both remote and overpopulated areas.

Now one of the biggest providers of ecosan in the developing world, Wherever the Need has impacted the lives of more than 50,000 people in India, Kenya, and Sierra Leone to date. In India alone, more than 30,000 people use the organization's ecosan toilets daily. With sanitation in place, Wherever the Need carries out water projects to make clean drinking water locally accessible to everyone, as well as works closely with communities to ensure a sustainable future for them.