Jack Sim and the World Toilet Organization
Today I had a quick chat with Ashoka-Lemelson fellow Jack Sim, founder of the World Toilet Organization. The WTO is committed to delivering healthier and safer sanitation around the world.
He talked about where he sees his organization going. Now that they've perfected a means of delivering toilets to those who need them, Jack wants to use that system to offer a platform for delivering numerous BOP products and services. Note: This video contains slang for and frank discussion of sewage.
Showing my nonprofit background, I asked Jack what he sees as the role of NGOs in the informational campaign he describes. Is this the sort of area where NGOs and social enteprises can partner with each other. Jack's wonderfully direct answer: "Yes, of course, but it's even better if it's a social enterprise and a social enterprise partnering with each other."
"The charity model," Jack said, "is, 'Prove to me that you are useless, helpless, and worthless, and I will show my great generosity in helping you.'"
See this older post for more on how Jack makes toilets sexy.
Comments
success = technology + enabler at appropriate scale
Pair the technology (toilet) with an enabler (micro-entrepreneur in this case) who will figure out the local business model with that technology. (Maybe spread examples from elsewhere to help seed their thinking!)
32 lessons about toilets
Responding to the question about what is the key to toilet use, the answer is clearly "good user experience on the toilet," according to the lessons from 3 years of Ashoka's Water Innovations work with 32 social entrepreneurs.
And the key to that is often "good maintenance," because poorly maintained toilets very quickly fall into disrepair and are not used, while well maintained and clean toilets tend to continue being used.
But finding a way to ensure toilet maintenance turns out to be super tough in many traditional sanitation models.
The Ashoka work over 3 years surfaced three alternative business models which do actually keep toilets clean, and thus active:
1. "Waste to productivity" -- when someone is vested in turning the sewage into something valuable (usually minerals or fertlizer at small or large scale), then the local economy is vested in keeping the resource (the sewage) flowing. Local entrepreneurs and others then maintain, market, and clean the toilets. Thus, people keep using them them, the waste is turned into a productive resource, sanitation improves, and disease drops.
2. "Micro-enterprise clusters" -- when public toilets attract people, then small enterprises can take advantage of that crowd to sell things, such as newspapers and magazines, shoe shines, advertisements, and more. But if the toilets are dirty, people do not come, and the enterprises do not make money. So appropriate scale micro enterprises motivate their operators to keep the toilet's clean. They make money as a result, and sanitation improves as a result, all locally managed.
3. "Build community by cleaning it first" -- some innovative models move in and do the dirty job of cleaning up a messy toilet in an institution like a school or company, then asked to get paid afterwards. Their success lies in ability to vest the community of toilet-users in the good experience, so those users (students, employees, others) then exert pressure on the institution to keep the toilets clean in the future. This model sometimes gives direct responsibility to the user as well - for example, you must bring your own toilet paper as the "entrance ticket" to be allowed to use the toilet.
Thus, the work of Ashoka Fellows suggests that locally-based business or community models align the incentives for toilets to be kept clean, and thus used, without requiring (and often in ways more successful than) ongoing outside charity. Email dstrelneck@ashoka.org with any questions or ideas!