World Toilet Day 2022: Making the invisible visible
Improving the global water and sanitation situation is the overarching goal of IHE Delft training and research – and as toilets are key in reaching this goal, we consider World Toilet Day a special day. World Toilet Day, marked November 19, was first celebrated in 2001 by the World Toilet Organization and was recognized by the United Nations in 2013. This year, the day focuses on groundwater – an often-invisible resource that is affected by the sanitation situation on the surface.
A lack of access to proper toilets harms the health and quality of life for the 3.6 billion people who live in situations with poor sanitation facilities. Inadequate sanitation facilities can taint water sources including groundwater, and cause diseases and increase death rates. Poor sanitation facilities can spread human waste into rivers, lakes and soil, all of which are crucial for the subsistence of communities in many countries and regions. IHE Delft research and training aim to help improve the sanitation sector globally – learn more about this work below.
Alumni interview
Nobody is safe until we are all safe
Highlighted project
Global Sanitation Graduate School
In partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, IHE Delft and 42 academic institutions from Asia, Africa and Latin America work together to establish the Global Sanitation Graduate School (GSGS) - a platform that facilitates the development and dissemination of knowledge on sanitation through postgraduate (MSc) programmes, courses and tailor-made training. The GSGS project, which runs from 2018 to 2025, strives to educate and train 10,000 sanitation professionals by the year 2030.
Education in the spotlight
Diploma course: Strengthening skills in the humanitarian WASH
Professionals in the Humanitarian Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) sector must be able to collaborate with many partners, coordinate complex efforts in remote areas, communicate well with diverse communities and solve a myriad of unexpected problems. Those skills are all emphasised in the IHE Delft Graduate Professional Diploma Programme in Humanitarian WASH.
Highlighted research
IHE Delft MSc graduate shows way forward for monitoring city-wide sanitation progress in new paper
More than 40 cities around the globe have adopted a city-wide inclusive approach to sanitation, which encompasses not only the parts of the city that are connected to a sewer system, but also any parts that use pit latrines or other non-sewered systems. This is a welcome development as these approaches include all who live in a city – regardless of their income, status or any other factors.
New MSc track in Water and Health
The new MSc programmes are divided in four thematic tracks each tackling a different societal water challenge and building on the available teaching and research expertise within IHE Delft.
The track 'Water and Health' engages in how the implementation of drinking water provision and sewered and non-sewered sanitation relate to human health, urbanization and the environment.
Short course in the spotlight: sanitation resource recovery
This short course introduces participants to different resource recovery opportunities along the sanitation chain
Toilets and sanitation quiz for MSc students
On Monday, 21 November, MSc students are invited to take part in a quiz related to toilets and sanitation. The event will be led by Konstantina Velkushanova, IHE Delft Senior Lecturer in Non-Sewered Sanitation, and recent MSc sanitation graduates, and introduced by Damir Brdjanovic, professor of Citywide Inclusive Sanitation and founder of the Global Sanitation Graduate School.
Our target is to train at least 10,000 sanitation champions in developing and implementing sanitation – at least half of them women – by 2030