 When I try to talk to people in Australia or when I start a conversation about toilets people are a bit like, oh yeah that's not very socially acceptable and it's something that it's not talked about but obviously everyone uses a toilet. Whereas when I go into these communities there I'll say, oh I'm a water, sanitation and hygiene engineer and they're like, that's awesome, we want to talk to you about this, we've got issues with our drinking water quality, we want to improve our toilets, we've got issues with typhoid, what can we do? Do you know you're an engineer and you've got some experience? This is what we currently do, how can we work together to improve the situation? The largest cause of death in children under five around the world is diarrheal diseases and most of these are actually caused because of poor water, sanitation and hygiene and in particular when we're tackling the drinking water side of things it's very important that we look at the sanitation because the pollution from human excrement is what's getting into the water supplies and causing a lot of these diseases. By having proper sanitation there are less work days lost to illness and that can have a huge impact on quality of life. We have social security, we have sick days here in Australia but if you're in a place where if you don't work you don't have any money it means that not only are you sick but also your family can be suffering because you can't buy them food. One of the other impacts of poor sanitation which probably isn't discussed as much in the media is the impact it can have on the surrounding environment. So for example in Fiji communities are starting to realize that if they don't have a proper sewage system or a composting toilet the waste is ending up in their coral reef systems and so there's lots of issues with having a lower fish productivity and damage to the corals and the communities are actually starting to see this themselves. If people are used to going out to the toilet in nature why do they feel that they need to use a toilet? So it's not just that economic thing it's also looking at people's behavior and a lot of the time in communities there's not this understanding that the reason that the kids are getting really sick is because they don't have a proper toilets and people aren't washing their hands properly and that sort of thing. One of the big movements in the last decade has been something called sanitation marketing and so that's actually looking at working directly with communities to develop a sanitation technology that they think is appropriate and also developing a business model around that. So by developing the sanitation marketing enterprises not only are we doing activities which is helping the community to understand why they want a toilet and hopefully driving demand for toilets but also helping stimulate the local economy. So we've got the people who are employed to build the parts for the toilet and install the toilet and also the people who are going around trying to market these toilets as well. So one of the really cool things about working with communities is seeing the ideas of different technologies have come up with themselves. Recently I was in an informal settlement in Fiji where a guy wanted to install a toilet, really didn't have any money and was waiting for some government assistance. When he realized that wasn't going to happen he designed his own system where he got an old fridge from the dump which he put on the roof of his shanty where he collected rainwater which then filtered down to his toilet and then he used that to flush the toilet and then the water from there went into an old chest freezer which he was using as a septic tank underground. I think it's really interesting when you meet these people who've obviously got this initiative and these ideas and that's what we really need to harness that energy and the excitement of when we're working with communities to develop these different technologies. NGOs and governments nowadays are definitely pushing for this participatory approach to development. It's all about finding out what communities want and in capacity building the communities to be able to do it themselves. It's not about us going in and building the toilets or telling people how they should do it. It's about us facilitating these guys to have the conversations so that they can then work out what's best for their community and be inspired and have the demand driven within the community themselves to approach the problem.