Poop is No Laughing Matter, Okay It Is

This UNICEF video uses humor to make the point that sanitation issues can be funny when kids talk about it but there are real human costs that aren't so funny. I thought I would share the first part of that post here and urge you to read it all on the Woodrow Wilson Center's New Security Beat. My primary point was the hidden cost of no or poor sanitation at schools: girls often drop out or stay home once they reach puberty. The school in Berga only goes to 4th grade. Part of expanding the school to serve kids up to 8th grade will be the necessity to upgrade its sanitation facilities as well.

I was actually responding to a post by the New York Times' Andy Revkin, the most important journalist with an environmental beat at a major newspaper in the United States (he might be the only one too!).

A recent post on Andy Revkin’s Dot Earth blog—entitled “Poop is Funny, But It’s Fatal”—highlights a UNICEF World Water Day video about the necessity of destigmatizing human waste. Bacterial infections caused by contact with human waste kill 1.5 million people every year—most of them children. The stakes are high. The film uses kids and humor—two good ingredients for education through entertainment—to explain the importance of sanitation. The film emphasizes that although we may not like talking about feces, urine, toilets, and the like, we need to because the fact that 2.6 billion of us lack adequate sanitation is a fundamental threat to human health, productivity, and dignity. It’s a short film—YouTube friendly—and these are complex links, but they are key to understanding the need to invest in available technologies. The UNICEF video rightly emphasizes the additional costs of lack of sanitation, noting that girls often won’t attend school if there isn’t adequate sanitation...