What have we got two loos?! (Golborne’s twin-twin situation)

Moved to make a difference

The group – Margaret, Sylvia, Valerie, Hilda and Liz – were moved by what they heard. ‘We decided that we’d try and save a couple of pounds out of our money each week and just put it in when we met up until we had the 60 pounds,’ she says. The goal wasn’t an easy one though. ‘Four of us are widows and the other one’s got a disabled husband, and we range in ages from the youngest one who's 70 and the eldest one's 82. And because we're pensioners, some weeks we have money left and some weeks we don't.’

The ladies lost no time in getting started. Rev Helen made a couple of posters with pictures from the Toilet Twinning website to put up in church, and the collecting began at the Thursday and Sunday services each week. ‘£60 is not a lot,’ says Margaret, ‘but it is to us.’

Inspiring giving

After some months, the money was finally all collected and ready for Rev Helen to go onto the Toilet Twinning website and twin a toilet for the ladies. ‘We were thrilled to bits!’ says Margaret.

Together, the ladies had a look at the list of countries where they could choose a loo to twin, and decided on the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). And then a funny thing happened that Rev Helen describes as a ‘God story’. When she went to twin the toilet, she accidentally twinned two! She quickly managed to get a refund for the extra £60, but she says it was like it was meant to be, because that Sunday another lovely thing happened…

At the end of the service, Rev Helen called Margaret to come up to the front on behalf of the group of ladies to receive the certificate showing the latrine they’d twinned in DRC and to explain what they’d done and why. What Margaret said to the people gathered was so inspiring that Rev Helen soon found herself in possession of another £60 to twin the church’s other toilet. A member of the Sunday congregation had been so encouraged by the sacrificial giving of the group of ladies, that they had been motivated to do the same. That second toilet hadn’t been a mistake at all! ‘I was meant to be able to twin both!’ says Rev Helen.

‘I was so delighted with their heart and wanting to do something for someone else,’ says Rev Helen.

For £60 you (or your church/school/bingo team/cricket club/knitting circle) could twin a loo too! 

*Toilet Twinning helps families and communities to build their own toilets, and funds community-led hygiene education workshops. This helps keep people safe from sicknesses like diarrhoea (which can be deadly – especially for small children), as well as protecting them from the other dangers that exist when you’re forced to go into the bush alone to relieve yourself.