The story from Antonate Akinyi Ondewe’s childhood is heartbreaking. Her father had built a pit latrine near her home in a settlement in Nairobi, Kenya, for the benefit of the neighbourhood. Once full, the family used a bucket at night, which was emptied into open trenches nearby. One morning, an elder saw her, growling: “now I’ve found you”.
Her punishment: to clean the trench – during the day in full view of the community.
“I could not face anyone,” she recounted in a new short film from loo roll brand Who Gives A Crap, produced by BBC StoryWorks as part of its Common Good series (online).
The humiliation and shame of the incident was clearly still raw for Ondewe. She resolved: “I promised myself when I was growing up that no kid of mine is going to go through what I went through.”
True to the word of her nine-year-old self, Ondewe became a sanitation worker with Fresh Life, one of Who Gives A Crap’s long-standing partners. The organisation installs waterless, container-based toilets in informal settlements across Kenya, helping to ensure children today do not endure what Ondewe once did.
The film also told of the brand’s mission to give everyone in the world access to clean water and a toilet, via co-founder Danny Alexander.
He’s perhaps too humble to boast of just how much the company puts its money where its mouth is – 50% of its profits – compared with the notional hand-waving towards charities seen from far bigger brands.
It’s an incredibly inspiring short that will move most into giving a crap about the issue.
No comments yet