Hurry up!

In 2003 WSSCC produced a set of posters, stickers and postcards for the Geneva WASH Week held in December. They were distributed at the conference itself as well as displayed in public places such as the Geneva buses or luggage rolls in the Geneva airport. The messages and advocacy material designed for the 2003 WASH Week campaign went beyond their original purpose and have witnessed a world wide success. Indeed, the WASH messages that have been initially used for awareness raising among the conference venue and the local population in Geneva are being taken up by WSSCC's country partners and adapted for national level advocacy initiatives, which is exactly the result WSSCC is hoping for.

• Click here to see the images & messages.

In 2007 the need to "Hurry up" is more urgent than ever. To address the current sanitation crisis, WSSCC has developed a set of new WASH materials. However, not all images are new. The two principal messages which referred in 2003 to the number of people lacking adequate sanitation, namely "Hurry up! 2.4 billion people want to use the toilet", remain the core. Sadly, the number of these people has increased.

The new WASH messages aim to denounce the appalling consequences of lacking safe drinking water and being deprived of defecating in dignity. They intend to support WASH advocacy initiatives at global level and at country level, carried out by WSSCC's national coordinators, members and partners.  

The General Assembly of the United Nations has designated 2008 as the International Year of Sanitation (IYS). The central objective of IYS is to put the international community on track to achieve the sanitation MDG target (MDG 7 target 10). This set of new WASH advocacy materials aims at contributing to the awareness raising goal of IYS about the issues associated with sanitation including health, social and economic development and gender equality.

It is time to hurry up indeed. If 2.4 billion people lacked access to adequate sanitation yesterday, they count 2.6 billion today.

• The new set of WASH materials is available here.

 

Please click on the images on the right to enlarge them.