Four newly-built toilets in the St Albans Cathedral welcome centre have been twinned with others around the world to help flush away poverty one toilet at a time.
The toilets have been twinned with those in Myanmar, Pakistan, Sierra Leone and Zambia, and for each paired toilet a donation of £60 was made to the Toilet Twinning Charity.
The charity funds projects to help build basic toilets and provide access to clean water in poor communities, maintaining a focus on the importance of hygiene education and community-led action in the improvement of sanitation.
The twinned toilets in St Albans have been set up by members of Soroptimist International St Albans and District, the local branch of a global volunteer movement which works to improve the lives of women and girls.
Around the world 4.5 billion people do not have access to a safe household toilet, and this issue affects women disproportionately.
The lack of toilet facilities in many communities often prevents girls from going to school, a situation that Soroptimists globally are working to change. The Toilet Twinning certificates are now hanging in the toilets at the newly-opened Welcome Centre at the St Albans Cathedral, which is now open daily.
Sub dean of St Albans Cathedral Abi Thompson was presented with the four framed certificates, which include a photograph of the overseas toilet twin and its GPS location.
She said: "The lack of safe and private toilet facilities for girls and women in some parts of the world is an incredibly important issue.
"We are very glad at St Albans Cathedral to be able to draw attention to this problem, and hope that our involvement with the Soroptimist's toilet twinning project will inform lots of our visitors of this great need."
She added: "We hope it will encourage more people to support the charity."
Since 2016, the local members of Soroptimist International have twinned 14 toilets in St Albans.
A total of 30 twinned toilets are needed in order to be appointed as an official 'toilet twinned city'.
Visit https://sigbi.org/st-albans-and-district/ to find out more about making St Albans a toilet twinned city.
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