How Mr. Toilet is steering the ‘future of social development’

By collaborating with celebrities, politicians and like-minded organizations, Jack Sim was able to turn the spotlight on the need to bridge the gap in access to proper sanitation in developing countries. When the Millennium Development Goals were set in 2000, two-fifths of the global population, or 2.4 billion people, lacked access to basic sanitation. As part of MDG 7 on ensuring environmental sustainability, the international development community committed to halve this proportion by 2015. But while 64 percent of the global population now has access to improved sanitation, up to 2.5 billion people still don’t. Sim, a Singapore-based serial entrepreneur, realized that the unspoken taboo on talking about toilets and the need for proper and hygienic sanitation facilities has contributed not just to the neglect of public restrooms in the city-state — at that time — but also to insufficient access to basic sanitation facilities in developing countries. To break this taboo, Sim established the World Toilet Organization on Nov. 19, 2001. From the beginning, he decided to use a mix of humor and serious facts to get the conversation going on sanitation. Even the acronym for the organization’s name, WTO, was a deliberate pun on the World Trade Organization. Sim doesn’t shy away from using colloquial terms often deemed inappropriate in polite conversations — poop, crap and shit, to name a few — in his interviews with the media, video featurettes and even in the op-eds that he writes. He even proudly embraced the moniker his critics baptized him with: Mr. Toilet. Sim recognizes the power of the celebrity to affect change as well. In India, WTO has worked with popular Bollywood stars such as actor and philanthropist Salman Khan, who early this year raised $140,000 for WTO, and actress and humanitarian Vidya Balan, who has starred in a series of promotional videos on sanitation. "We have to turn poop culture into pop culture." -- Perhaps controversially, Mr. Toilet is striving to rebrand toilets as a “status symbol.” The reason cellphones have become so popular in the developing world, according to this entrepreneur, is that people see them not just as something they need — but also as a sign that they are no longer as poor as they used to be. People, he explained, need to see toilets in the same way, as something to aspire for. “We have to turn poop culture into pop culture,” Sim told Devex in a phone interview. “Rationality is not going to solve [the sanitation problem] fast enough. If we talk about [toilets] as something of health and hygiene, people understand but they are not as likely to take action as if we talked about toilets that give them status, prevent them from being looked down upon by others, prevent them from being backward. … if you have a toilet, you actually arrived at a station in life.” But the aspiration to have proper toilets has to be “legitimized” in movies, by celebrities and politicians, and, more importantly by neighbors. And a lot of people have stepped up for the cause. Matt Damon did a video in support of World Toilet Day. Bill Gates is reinventing the toilet. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, meanwhile, has set a one-year deadline to make sure all schools in the country have toilets for girls. In what could be seen as a moment of triumph for Sim, the U.N. General Assembly adopted a year ago a resolution officially designating Nov. 19 — WTO’s founding day — as World Toilet Day. Teaching a man to fish — or make toilets The global sanitation problem can’t be solved by gaining influential advocates alone, of course. And Sim is a believer of the old adage on teaching a man how to fish instead of giving him fish — even when it comes to philanthropy. So instead of just delivering free toilets, WTO set up SaniShop, a social enterprise that teaches people how to manufacture and sell toilets locally. “You need to create a local economy by training the [local] entrepreneur to start the business and then he will create jobs,” Sim explained. “In the process, we don’t just deliver toilets but we also create jobs, profit and income to the commission agent.” After being tested in seven provinces in Cambodia, the business model proved successful enough for SaniShop to expand to India. Sim is confident that if the SaniShop model worked to not only provide affordable toilets to local communities but also spur the local economy, then it could also work with other products and services such as solar lamps, cookstoves, housing, drinking water, medicine and transportation. Collaborating to serve the base of the pyramid Ever the optimist, the serial entrepreneur is hoping the same collaborative spirit that pushed the conversation on sanitation and the entrepreneurial spirit that made SaniShop possible will spur businesses in other sectors to find ways to work together to deliver essential services to underserved communities in developing countries. Drawing from his 16 years of experience setting up and running different businesses, including as a building materials supplier, Sim believes that if social enterprises targeting similar communities used the same distribution channels, products and services could be delivered faster, cheaper, better and easier. “If these people can piggyback their distribution on the other people so that they all can use each other’s resources rather than to employ people and to start reinventing the wheel, then wouldn’t it be so much like an ecosystem where everybody leverage on one another?” he pointed out. --"[As social entrepreneurs] we do hope that one day, our job is done and we are not relevant anymore. There’s no more poverty to be solved." It is in this spirit that Sim embarked on his latest venture: BoP Hub. Sim thinks social entrepreneurs aren’t collaborating enough because there are very few avenues for them to connect. And there are other reasons. One main impediment is that often social entrepreneurs are so busy putting out fires in their organizations that they’re unable to see the possibilities beyond the areas they are involved in. They may also feel they don’t know the language or the organization’s culture well enough to be able to do business with each other. It may even be a matter of trust — in an industry where “there are a lot of hijackers,” social entrepreneurs might see other businesses as competitors and not as collaborators. Sim hopes BoP Hub can provide a platform that could bring these businesses together and cultivate “symbiotic relationships” with each other. “What we want to create is a collaborative approach where it is not just the investor and the social entrepreneur or the company but everybody together,” Sim said. This means getting not just the small and medium enterprises and the large multinationals involved, but also the government, technology pioneers, multilateral donors, philanthropists, impact investors, universities and nongovernmental organizations. At present, BoP Hub is working with corporations such as Unilever and foundations like the Rockefeller Foundation and Shell Foundation to realize its vision. Unilever, for instance, helps build more toilets in underserved communities because “the more toilets we build, the more bleach [and soap] they can sell in the future.” Shell, meanwhile, serves as an incubator for social enterprises. BoP Hub works with governments as well, tapping their support to ease entry into local markets, and with the Development Bank of Singapore, which helps small companies grow their business. “The future of social development,” Sim mused, “could be through [the] ecosystem cluster.” BoP Hub is hosting the first-ever BoP World Convention & Expo on Aug. 28-30 in Singapore, and Devex will be there to cover it. Be sure to follow Devex on Twitter and Facebook and tweet us using #BoPConvEx. Check out more insights and analysis provided to hundreds of Executive Members worldwide, and subscribe to the Development Insider to receive the latest news, trends and policies that influence your organization.