Church in Biggin Hill joined the revo-loo-tion for Lent
St Mark’s Biggin Hill is feeling flush after helping their area qualify to become a Toilet Twinned Town!
They embarked on a collection for Toilet Twinning during Lent last year and would recommend it to anyone looking for an alternative way to mark Lent this year.
Mark Newman, who is a Reader & Evangelist at the church and who also chairs their Outreach and Mission committee said.
“We asked people to put money aside throughout Lent which they could then bring in at the end.
“For £60 you can “twin” a toilet at your church, workplace, or in your own home. The money then goes to fund a toilet in another part of the world.”
As a result, St. Mark’s were able to twin their 5 church toilets, providing four latrines in Guatemala, Myanmar, Uganda and the Central Africa Republic, and a whole block of toilets in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Mark adds: “The amazing thing about twinning a toilet is that you can quite quickly make a sustainable difference to a community in a developing country.”
Building on their success, the church went on to produce an eye-catching stand at the Biggin Hill Festival during the summer as a launch for their campaign to make Biggin Hill a Toilet Twinned Town.
For this, at least 20 twinned toilets were needed across a variety of buildings open to the public, for example cafés, restaurants, shops, leisure centres, schools and churches.
“Our local councillors gave their support in promoting the scheme” explains Mark, “and we were recently honoured by the visit of local MP Jo Johnson, who brought with him the certificate he had paid for to support our project. By mid-January we had reached 23 twinned toilets, qualifying us as a Toilet Twinned Town!”
Mark says that the unexpected spin-off for St Mark’s has been the connection it allowed the church to the community
“We’ve developed some good relations with local people we would not otherwise have met. As a continuation we aim to do some school assemblies and also encourage individuals to twin. As they say at TT, you can help flush away poverty.”
*Toilet Twinning is a water and sanitation initiative which started in 2008. So far over 100,000 toilets have been twinned across 12 countries. Find our more at: www.toilettwinning.org/