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FROM TABOO TO BUSINESS: A TOILET CHANGING CAMPAIGN IN MONGOLIA

Today in Mongolia young women and men are engaged via Facebook, hold cell phones, use cool apps…well…to sell dry toilets!... to off-grid communities of many cities and towns of Mongolia and even to nomadic herders. Not only their parents, but also their teachers could not comprehend that doing business on waterless toilets could be something a Mongolian man or woman can handle psychologically given the prejudice against even saying the word toilet (jorlon). With over 600,000 families urgently needing to change their dark, dangerous, dirty outdoor latrines, selling/installing/servicing toilets is a fast growing new business in one of the coldest countries in Asia. The start of such a new business is the result of a 23 month-long public education campaign, Let's Change Our Toilets, led by Local Solutions, an Ulaanbaatar based NGO. Just two years ago, the word toilet in Mongolian language was a taboo and there was a strong prejudice against anything related to toilets in off-grid areas.

As the initiator and the leader of the campaign, author of the book, Let's Change Our Toilet, Oyungerel Tsedevdamba will tell her story of breaking the taboo, undertaking a nationwide training on toilets, changing behaviors, and supporting the first ever toilet business cluster in Mongolia.

When: Thursday, October 3, 2019 at 12:15p.mm

Where: South Hall Commons