When it comes to dirty shopping centres, hard-working cleaners have seen it all.
Filthy toilets, dirty food courts, overflowing rubbish bins and spills left to fester – and all because cleaners at our most popular shopping centres are not given enough time to do their jobs well.
Cleaners have worked hard to end this hygiene crisis, repeatedly asking major cleaning contractors and major shopping centre owners to sit down with them and find a resolution.
So now it’s time to name and shame our worst offenders – and that’s where you come in.
Cleaners want to know about the filth and messes you’ve seen at any of our shopping centres. Have you seen a toilet so disgusting that you had to back away? Or a food court so filthy you decided to eat somewhere — anywhere — else?
Or perhaps your local mall could just do with the thorough clean that cleaners are never given the time to do?
Whatever your experience, cleaners want to know about it. So please take a moment to cast your vote in The Grimeys – it’s the Olympics for dirty shopping centres!
You can vote for the centre with the dirtiest toilet, the filthiest food court and the most unpleasant shopping centre overall.
The winner in each category will be awarded a gold medal – actually, a gold cockroach.
It’s not an award any shopping centre will want to brag about.
But the embarrassment of winning the award could prompt our worst shopping centres into finally cleaning up their act. It may give them the push they need to finally give cleaners time to do their jobs.
And Brigid, that means you and your family can enjoy your local shopping centres without worrying about grime, filth or picking up a nasty bug.
Many thanks,
Melbourne’s shopping centre cleaners.
PS You can also upload photos and videos of the nasty sights you spot at your shopping centre. So get out your phone and start snapping!
As Fagin's song suggests, we should always review the situation. What is attractive in the beginning may have unforeseen consequences. Human beings have a tendency to seek universal solutions and answers which in turn leads to one size fits all policies. We can also be hubristic, pushing forward our solutions without reflection, without pause for review, without recognising the risks and benefits of human interconnectedness with others.
Ned Breslin points out in the simple video below how microfinancing is not always the success story that is promoted.
He points out:
I am a big fan of microfinance, having started my first microfinance project for water and sanitation in rural KwaZulu, Natal, South Africa in 1993. But I learned very quickly in this project that there was often a gap between repayment rates and actual impact. The microfinance sector spends a great deal of time focused on repayment rates -- with organizations suggesting that they are successful and impactful because they can show a high repayment rate on the loans that they made. To illustrate, MFIs will often publish statistics like 95% repayment rates on loans and suggest that this means they are great at transforming poverty and changing lives.
Repayment matters of course, but it does not in any way confirm the impact of the loan. In the case of water and sanitation, a focus on loan repayment as the key (or only) indicator of success is misleading. Repayment of loans simply show that money was used to purchase a latrine and the money was paid back by the family.
But in this example from rural Bolivia I show that the real impact question is about whether the loan actually changed the lives of loan recipients? And as I learned in South Africa and since, the answer is often no. Families take out loans because they want to change their lives with that loan. That is great!
But if the toilet is poorly constructed, if the system does not work, or if a tap is paid for by a loan but water rarely is available at that tap, then the family took out a loan, repaid that loan and the investment had no impact on their lives. In fact, the loan might have made the family poorer in the end!
In the example here, the loan scheme was linked to a water project that was never completed. The family in this video took out a loan to get a flush latrine that has never been used because the water project -- started 6 years ago -- was never completed. The toilet is now useless.
Microfinance success should be judged on whether loans transformed lives,
World
Toilet Dayis one of our favorite holidays, and it is this
Saturday. With 2.6 Billion people in the world lacking a toilet, World Toilet
Day helps to raise awareness and also gets us all thinking about innovative
ways to tackle the problem.
At Water For People for example, we are working with local
entrepreneurs in Cuchumuela, Bolivia to support urine-diverting toilets, not as
a giveaway, but as a long-term business idea. Here’s why it’s working: The
area’s Monterrey pines are a perfect home for a mushroom called a bolete. This isn’t just any mushroom — a family in Cuchumuela can earn about $800 (US) per
year from mushroom sales. More mushrooms require more pines. And pines thrive
off of fertilizer from urine-diverting toilets. Now there’s demand for the
toilets and income revenue to boot!
Help
spread the word about World Toilet Day and send a great E-card. Send up to 19 at a time and remind everyone about this important day.
So let's hear it: Pees! Poos! Three Cheers for Loos!
We just tallied the numbers for the Donate to Drink $2
Million Challenge, where several generous donors put up $1 Million of their
money and challenged you, our supporters to raise the other million. We're
thrilled to announce that you made this a HUGE success. All together, you
raised $2.3 Million!
And here's the impact of your donation. This month,
we announced that Everyone in Chinda, Honduras has safe water. This isn't the end of our work in Chinda, but rather the beginning.
Every family, school and clinic has safe water, but now the challenge is to
ensure that it lasts forever. And just like you, the community, the local
government and the private sector — WE'RE ALL IN.
Watch the new
video to see how Everyone came together to
make a difference for every person in Chinda.
Happy World Toilet Day from all of us at Water For People!
