Today is World Toilet Day and this year’s theme is Sustainable Sanitation and Climate Change. Taking action to tackle the global sanitation crisis is at the core of what we do every day at FINISH Mondial!   

FINISH Mondial’s partners Waste, Amref Flying Doctors and Aqua for All work with a multi-stakeholder approach which involves the entire sanitation value chain. By mobilising the supply side of sanitation while integrating financial resources into the value chain, FINISH Mondial raises awareness on, and creates a demand for sustainable sanitation services amongst end-users with an ‘open-source’ approach. Working on financial inclusion for entire communities means safe sanitation and improved health improvements are sustainable and accessible for as many people as possible. 

On the occasion of World Toilet Day, we are excited to announce that the Directorate-General for International Cooperation (DGIS) run by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Netherlands will provide us with follow up funding worth €20 million for the period of 2021-2025. Thanks to this, we can support the scaling up of our programme and realise some of our big ambitions! Between 2021-2025, we aim to help around 10 million people gain access to safe sanitation by providing 2 million safely managed sanitation systems. 

“With World Toilet Day in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, we cannot stress the importance of sanitation and hygiene enough! We are therefore very proud to announce the scaling up of the FINISH Mondial Programme, with partner WASTE from 2021 onwards. We have committed €20 million for 5 years. The FINISH Mondial programme is the ‘Swiss army knife’ for sanitation. It not only leads to increased access to sanitation but will also leverage substantial local capital via microfinance. In addition, FINISH Mondial will create employment within the sanitation value chain, will ensure waste is safely managed and will contribute to the circular economy by reuse of faecal waste.” – Pim van der Male, Thematic Expert Water at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands. 

Climate change leads to increased risk of floods, drought and rising sea levels which, in turn, threatens sanitation systems and their infrastructure. Keeping this in mind, we are working on designing sustainable toilet technologies that are flood-resistant and climate-resilient. We are committed to working towards a world where everyone has access to safe and sustainable sanitation and the support provided by DGIS will help us reach even more local results to achieve our global ambitions.  

A final quote from our CEO Valentin Post: 

‘Partnering is at the core of FINISH Mondial. Partners which build on each other’s strengths to scale sanitation in six countries as well as a circular sanitation economy and (financial) innovation. In terms of sustainability, we partner with local governments in the field of sanitation standards, institutionalizing the design of safely managed sanitation and targeted financing. Sustainability in our view also means the development of sanitation markets.  We are extremely grateful to DGIS for partnering with us. FINISH Mondial is designed to unlock local finance which implies the € 20 million of DGIS will mobilise € 200 million in local finance for safely managed climate-resilient sanitation’.