Twinning 4 new toilets at St Albans Cathedral - Flushing away poverty, one toilet at a time!

On 15 August, members of Soroptimist International St Albans and District, the local branch of the global women’s organisation, were delighted to present Sub Dean Abi Thompson with four framed Toilet Twinning Certificates at St Albans Cathedral. Helping to flush away toilet poverty one toilet at a time, these new toilets in St Albans Cathedral’s newly opened Welcome Centre have been paired with toilets from Myanmar, Pakistan, Sierra Leone and Zambia.

Abi Thompson, Sub Dean of St Albans Cathedral was thrilled and said “The lack of safe and private toilet facilities for girls and women in some parts of the world is an incredibly important issue. We are very glad at St Albans Cathedral to be able to draw attention to this problem, and hope that our involvement with the Soroptimist’s toilet twinning project will inform lots of our visitors of this great need in many countries across the world.”

By donating £60 to the Toilet Twinning Charity to twin each of the toilets, it helps fund a project in a poor community that will enable families to build a basic toilet, have access to clean water and learn about hygiene – a vital combination that saves lives. Often girls can’t go to school because of lack of toilets, a situation that Members of Soroptimist International all over the world are working to address. Myanmar, Pakistan, Sierra Leone and Zambia were picked to twin with St Albans Cathedral and the certificates for each location will now be hung in the loos to inspire others to join in and support this initiative. The certificate includes a photograph of the overseas toilet twin and the GPS coordinates so you can look up the twin’s location on Google Maps! 

The addition of the Cathedral’s 4 twinned toilets brings the city of St Albans’ total up to 14 twinned toilets. A total of 30 are needed to be appointed an official ‘Toilet Twinned City.’ Visit https://sigbi.org/st-albans-and-district/ to see how you can help make St Albans a toilet twinned city.

Visitors can now access the new Welcome Centre from all around the Cathedral as the paths reopened for the first time in over two years on 14 August 2019.