Better Toilets, Better Life – Hygiene Projects in India
Joe MADIATH — Toilets and Life
This social engineer and entrepreneur brings Indian villagers together around water and sanitation projects in order to bring their life closer to what those in the western world simply take for granted.
Better toilets, better life
More Important Than Armies, Armaments or Spaceships
Joe Madiath, who calls himself a Social entrepreneur, is bringing Indian villagers together around water, hygiene and sanitation projects with suprising results. In rural India, he describes, “the lack of toilets creates a big, stinking problem.”
It leads to poor quality water, one of the leading causes of disease in India, and has a tremendously, disproportionately negative effect on women and children.
In this TED talk, Madiath introduces a program to help villagers help themselves, by building clean, protected water and sanitation systems and requiring everyone in the village to collaborate — with significant benefits that ripple across health, education and even government.
“For India,” he claims, “armies and armaments, software companies and spaceships may not be as important as taps and toilets.”