Low-cost Sanitation For Typhoon Haiyan Survivors

Dear Friends,

Greetings for the New Year 2014. The start of the year will also be our fresh start as we prepare to continue with our toilet construction and distribution of hygiene kits in Leyte Province. We stopped our activities start December 23 for the Christmas holidays. As of today, we have already filled-up our 2 elf trucks with toilet construction materials consisting mainly of nails, galvanized iron, iron re-bars and bamboo slats. These materials, as I mentioned previously is very difficult to procure in Leyte as few hardware stores are open and lines are long as local residents try to buy hardware materials in order to repair their houses.

As of today too, we are the only group constructing and/or repairing damaged toilets. A few other NGO's (international) are distributing toilet slabs which is just thick plastic with a hole and which I think is totally useless. Our approach is to construct entire toilet comprising septic tank, cement flooring, toilet bowl, wall, door and roof. If the toilet is the dry kind appropriate in waterless communities, instead of a septic tank, a fecal matter collector is installed. We are experts in this kind of activities winning twice in an international competition held in Israel, winning a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation award for Global Health Challenges and then as Tech Awardee in 2011.

Thank you my dearest friends for your kind support. As we build toilets, we realize too the need to help in the repair or build houses of the survivors. For some have nice toilets, but they are living in destitute dwellings, like animals, very pitiful and heart-breaking. 

Please help too our Filipino home-building initiative. The link is, 

http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/typhoon-haiyan-filipino-home-building-project/

With much gratitude,

Cora Sayre