Church World Service Europe Director Vitali Vorona (rear), Tatiana Vologna, mayor of Hasnasenii Mari (left), and Natalie Dejean, Women in Europe for a Common Future, at the opening of the village school’s new composting toilet, the first in northern Moldova. Photo: CWS
Ceremony heralds World Toilet Day
HASNASENII MARI, Moldova — Kids attending school in the small, northern Moldova village of Hasnasenii Mari today celebrated their school’s first toilet at a special ceremony.
The new urine diverting dry toilet (UDDT), or composting toilet, is the first of its kind in northern Moldova, inaugurated a day before World Toilet Day (Nov. 19). The device, which does not require water flushing, is being introduced in the community as a sustainable sanitation option to serve some 250 pupils and teachers at the school.
Seen as a hygienic and environmentally sound toilet solution in areas where centralized systems aren’t realistic, more composting toilets are planned for schools in the region. They are part of a wider water and sanitation program being rolled out in Moldova by CWS, in collaboration with Women in Europe for the Common Future (WECF).
U.S. guests for the installation’s ceremony came from as far away as Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Illinois and Indiana. The American visitors, who have been in Serbia and Moldova since last week [November 9], are staff members from several CWS regional offices in the U.S.
“Access to clean water is one of the main problems facing the population,” Dr. Vitali Vorona, CWS regional representative for Europe, told his American colleagues.
Vorona says almost all of the 900 villages in Moldova have serious problems accessing clean drinking water and sanitation systems. In rural areas like Hasnasenii Mari, household latrines, not toilets, are the norm.
“It’s almost ironic,” said CWS’s Tom Hampson, of Elkhart, Indiana, “that, here in struggling Moldova, a modest little rural school with so few resources should be introducing sanitation facilities that are increasingly becoming a leading edge green technology choice in far more developed countries.”
In the U.S., composting toilets are now finding their way beyond highway rest areas and state parks and into the bathrooms of more progressive, eco-thinking homeowners who want to live sustainably and off the grid. Indeed, the school’s new “green” toilet is in company with some of the pricier, futuristic international eco-hotel offerings.
“Clean, sustainable water and sanitation resources are a key issue for Church World Service,” says Vorona. “And here in Moldova, it is a particularly vital concern.”
Earlier this year, during World Water Week, CWS’s Vorona presented at the Chisinau March 22 conference “Implementation of the Human Right to Water and Sanitation in Moldova,” which focused on the international Protocol on Water and Health. Vorona says that Moldova’s water supply and sewerage systems have degraded to the degree that “up to 45 percent of the population uses drinking water that does not comply with sanitary standards.”
CWS implements water and sanitation projects and supports food security, education, livelihoods training and human rights initiatives in both Moldova and Serbia, in collaboration with its network of local partner organizations.
American humanitarian team visits Moldovan, Serbian vulnerable youth programs
With a focus on vulnerable children and youth more broadly, members in the current CWS delegation to the Balkans have also visited in Moldova’s capitol Chisinau with youth and a foster family who are participating in a model, CWS-supported “children at risk” program.
The innovative program not only trains new foster families in the special skills needed for positive parenting of vulnerable, neglected, abused or abandoned children, but also engages both foster parents and youth in learning skills together that can help them start a small business and help them qualify for a modest startup grant – building current and future security for both the adults and youth.
After touring successful school programs for vulnerable Roma children in Belgrade and Smederevo, Serbia, and dynamic food security and water and sanitation programs in Smederevo and Moldova, the U.S. visitors intend to bring reports of the challenges facing Eastern Europe’s most vulnerable back to caring constituents in their home communities.
During Friday’s ceremony at the Hasnasenii Mari school, Mary Catherine Hinds, associate director for CWS’s Southeast Region, in Raleigh, North Carolina, presented a gift to the school and students. It’s a 2.5 meter “blessings banner,” crafted by Raleigh-area community members who are volunteers in local CROP Hunger Walks. CROP Hunger Walks are held across the U.S. every year, raising funds to fight hunger and poverty at home and, internationally, “to support programs just like this Moldova school sanitation project,” says Hinds.