Thanks to the support of the Old Town Chinatown community and a few other friends of PHLUSH from other part of Portland, Barb Lescher and Carol McCreary are ticketed passengers on a flight to Singapore.       We will be speaking at the World Toilet Summit.    You can preview our presentations here.   This is a real honor for our group of grassroots activists and for the City of Portland.

Special thanks to Lan Nguyen for heading up the fundraising effort and bringing us to 80% of the goal for the PHLUSH Singapore Challenge.    It’s a long way to Singapore, but until people in the United States take up the cause, we felt we needed to be there.  We hope someday to bring the World Toilet Summit to Portland to let the messages resonate:  Sanitation is health.  Sanitation is dignity.    And as our names says, Public Hygiene Lets Us Stay Human.

As the sun sets on Portland, 24 hours of celebration around the world come to a close. November 19 marks World Toilet Day, an annual project of the World Toilet Organization to bring light-hearted awareness to a dead serious crisis.   Two and a half billion of our fellow humans, or 2 out of 5, lack proper sanitation.

Lack of sanitation is the world’s biggest cause of infection, with the majority of the world’s illness caused by fecal matter. One gram of feces can contain 10 million viruses, one million bacteria, 1,000 parasite cysts and 100 parasite eggs. Diarrheal diseases kill five times as many children in the developing world as HIV/AIDS. That’s 5,000 children dying every single day.

Awareness events throughout the world included everything from clean ups, to design workshops, to tours of sewage plants to the Big Squat.   Here in Portland, PHLUSH Co-Founder Barb Lescher spoke at Portland State University on her career responding to the needs of homeless people through grassroots initiatives, particularly her work as Excutive Director of Our Peaceful Place.  The students in Celine Fitzmaurice’s Senior Capstone are not only studying homelessness and poverty but are carrying out projects in Old Town Chinatown in collaboration with the MacDonald Center and the Downtown Chapel.

With inspiration from the folks at Sisters of the Road Café, we’re launching the PHLUSH Singapore Challenge.  You see, they’re passing the hat to support  PHLUSH.   Former café manager Nikki Jardin is the PHLUSH Co-Founder who suggested the name with our mission:  Public Hygiene Lets Us Stay Human.

How about joining with colleagues at your workplace to help PHLUSH get to the World Toilet Summit in Singapore?   Here’s a mini-poster you can download .

We’ve just passed the halfway mark to the goal of $2500.  That’s for 2 air tickets and a modest hotel room for 5 nights.   Barb and Carol will cover all expenses on the ground. Neighbors West-Northwest, the 501 (c) 3 non-profit that serves as our fiscal sponsor is receiving tax-deductible donations.  Contributions are welcome on line (add special instruction “PHLUSH” before hitting send).   Or checks (with “PHLUSH” in the memo line) can be mailed to Neighbors West-Northwest, 2257 NW Raleigh St., PDX 97210.

Tickets have been booked to permit two PHLUSH Co-Founders to speak at the World Toilet Summit and Expo in Singapore on December 3, 2009.     Organizers of the eighth annual event invited PHLUSH to share Portland’s experience in increasing the availability of public restrooms with experts from around the world.

Barbara Lescher will present Public Restroom Design for 21st Century US Cities:  The PHLUSH Principles. These design principles were passed by the Old Town Chinatown Neighborhood Association in June 2008.   Carol McCreary’s presentation Innovations in Sustainable Design:  Case studies from Portland, Oregon looks at the Portland Loo and the opportunity to plan for a composting toilet at Gateway Green, a 36-acre public park to be developed near the Gateway Transit Center.   You can view their 20-minute presentations here.

PHLUSH is the only grass roots, all-volunteer organization  represented  on the Summit program and  we are relying on community supporters to get there. So far we’ve reached 45% of our goal of $2500, which is the cost of air tickets and a hotel room for 5 nights.  Details on how to make a tax-deductible contribution are here.

World Toilet Day is November 19.  A lengthening list of events are being planned throughout the world to bring attention to the 2.5 billion who don’t have proper sanitation.

Did you know?

• Diarrheal diseases kill five times as many children in the developing world as HIV/AIDS. Diarrheal diseases cause 2.2 million deaths a year, mostly among children under five. That’s the equivalent of 20 jumbo jets crashing EVERY DAY.
• Women who must go to secluded spaces in their village to “squat” are often raped while trying to do something we take for granted many times each day.

In Wisconsin, Seedfolks Roots & Shoots and 4-H Clubs are having a Big Squat.  They’ve invited the public to squat for one minute to draw attention to this situation.  They’re hoping to have a squatting line that winds throughout the church where they meet.    Milwaukee 4-H Clubs :  You rock!

How about a Big Squat to celebrate World Toilet Day in your school or workplace?   Join a global movement. Instructions here in the Big Squat Toolkit.