In Asia, it used to be that 24-karat gold was the sign for having made it. Then came having a mobile phone. Singapore entrepreneur Jack Sim hopes that having a toilet will be next. He doesn’t think non-profit organizations which he says have to spend half their time fundraising and the other half writing reports, are up to the task of solving the hygiene problems he’s trying to address. An estimated 1.2 billion people worldwide, according to UNICEF, defecate in the open due to a lack of toilet facilities of any kind. Sim is beginning his campaign in Cambodia where every year 11,000 people die of diarrhea linked to open defecation, a figure that is more than the combined deaths from AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. Why not, he believes, tap into people’s dreams rather than their fears? “If you tell someone they may die of diarrhea, it is not much of an incentive to build a toilet. But if toilets become a sign of wealth, jealousy over the neighbors’ latrines will drive them to build their own,” Sim says. “…if people can buy 20 million hand phones in India, they can buy 20 million toilets.”
Sometimes,it takes an entrepreneur…
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