Giving Compass' Take:

• Brandon Wiggins highlights Sanitation and Health Rights India (SHRI) which provides community toilets that are self-sustainable and give clean sanitation and drinking water.

• Access to clean drinking water and sanitation has been recognized as a human right by the United Nations. How can donors help support this cause?

• Learn more about rural sanitation in India. 

Open defecation is a rampant issue in India — one that leads to widespread water contamination and can leave women particularly vulnerable to violence by forcing them to walk long distances in the dark to find a place to use the bathroom.

But efforts have been made in recent years to reduce rates of open defecation to zero.

Sanitation and Health Rights India (SHRI) aims to do just that by providing sanitary bathroom facilities and clean drinking water to rural India through the use of community toilets.

SHRI was co-founded by Anoop Jain — who was the very first winner of the Waislitz Global Citizen Award in 2014 — alongside Prabin Kumar Ghimire and Chandan Kumar.

Many communities in India don’t have accessible toilets and are therefore forced to go outside, often in or near bodies of water.

That is why the founders of SHRI decided to focus on community toilets. Community toilets are a cost-effective fix and depend upon community buy-in, allowing for behaviors to change over time, according to SHRI.

Read the full article about bringing sanitation to rural India by Brandon Wiggins at Global Citizen.