Mike Foster MP is Minister for International Development in the UK – and has real power to reduce the 2.5 billion people without access to a safe and sanitary toilet through improving his government’s policies and influencing his global counterparts. Join us on World Toilet Day to call for action!

Dear Minister,

Be a toilet hero for the billions without one.

Today is World Toilet Day. It’s the day to stop and think ‘thank goodness I’ve got somewhere to go’. You have a toilet but, like most of us, you probably take this basic service for granted. There are few things in the world as important as the humble toilet. Today the number without is 2.5 billion. The child deaths that result from this, the school days lost, and cost to developing country economies is nothing less than scandalous.

One in three people are waiting but no political champion has stepped forward. Although we welcome some of the recent steps taken by you and the UK government, we need you to do more. This World Toilet Day we challenge you to break the silence on the sanitation crisis and be a toilet hero to billions.

Thanks for your response today, but please respond to our specific calls: we ask you to:

- Contact Canada, France, Japan and the US asking them to support the Global Framework for Action on sanitation and water
- Make sure the UK government sends a Minister to talk toilets at the High-Level Meeting in Washington in April.

Thank you.