Introduction: Do you like my T-Shirt? Yes, my T-Shirt really does have a picture of someone sitting on the loo on it! This morning’s assembly (believe it or not) is all about going to the toilet. [kids either laugh or look confused at this point] Perhaps show a clip from Flushed Away or read out Steve Turner’s poem The Day I Fell down the Toilet.

If you use this toilet you’ll be safe.

If you use this toilet, you will probably get sick, and you’ll be out in the open – where other people might be able to see you. You probably won’t want to go here. But what if you don’t have a choice? Right now, thousands of hospital beds in poor countries are filled with people who have an illness caused by poor sanitation or dirty water.

In Sierra Leone, Mariama says,'Before we had latrines, we used to go to the toilet in the bush. Flies would land on our food, carrying disease. When my child was sick with diarrhoea, there was no money to take her to the nearest health centre. But thank God, she survived it.’ (You could show the 90-second introduction to Toilet Twinning film at this point. It’s on our website, on YouTube, or you can ask us for a DVD)

Bridget lives in Uganda. Her parents are banana farmers. Bridget wants to finish her education and become a nurse.   But she needs to stay in school to realise this dream.

Only one in three children in Uganda finishes their primary education. At Bridget’s school, about 20 girls used to drop out of school every year because the toilet facilities at the school were so bad.   Bridget says this about the old toilets: ‘Our old latrines were very disgusting, especially in the rainy season. You’d feel sick and people would be retching, because they were so smelly.’ Toilet Twinning funded a new toilet block. ‘It’s got no bad smell and has no flies,’ says Bridget. (You could show the four minute film of Bridget’s story – find it on our website, on YouTube, or ask us to send you a DVD)

Through Toilet Twinning, for £60 you can twin your school toilets with a toilet at a family home overseas, or for £240 you can twin with a displacement camp toilet block, or a toilet block at a school. Could your school hold a fundraiser and raise money for families in poor communities? We’ll send you a certificate to hang in your school toilets to celebrate the money you give. You can order a schools pack on our website, or download resources in the schools area: www.toilettwinning.org