Every year on November 19, the UN observes World Toilet Day to create awareness about the 4.2 billion people who are living without ‘safely managed sanitation’. The day highlights the importance of sanitation and hygiene in driving improvements in public health, gender equality, education, economic development and environmental protection.
This year’s theme for World Toilet Day is ‘Valuing Toilets’.
The Embassy Group has built and renovated 185 toilets in their adopted government schools in Karnataka, with fully functioning bathroom facilities, hand wash stations supplied with soap, and clean water. The company maintains 253 toilets every day in 18 Government schools.
The lack of hygienic toilets in government schools continues to threaten the education of students who are at risk of getting sick and subsequently missing school, adding to dropping attendance rates. To ensure the schools are disease-free and hygienic, the group also distributed health kits, awareness posters and workbooks that provided tools to stay clean and healthy, as well as information on health risks, preventive measures, and hygiene maintenance.
Shaina Ganapthy, head of community outreach, Embassy Group, said, “The access to sanitation, hygiene and clean drinking water has proven to be an enormous public health challenge for our country, with large swathes of our population still deprived of these basic needs. Through the flagship government school health and hygiene programme, the group not only wants to build and renovate toilets for the adopted schools but go on to maintain them along with a dedicated team of professional cleaning staff from the facilities management arm the Technique Control Facilities Management (TCFM).”
The company also established a seven-step holistic health and hygiene programme that provides prevention of diseases, including awareness, daily maintenance and clean drinking water and comprehensive health screenings and medical interventions.