Write to your local newspaper

You could also send your local newspaper one of our World Toilet Day campaigning postcards. Find out more.

Help us to spread the word about the global sanitation crisis. Write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper to mark World Toilet day on 19 November

2008 is the UN International Year of Sanitation. It provides a good opportunity to raise wider awareness of the lack of access to toilets in many developing countries.

Writing to your local newspaper editor is a good way of getting the issue of sanitation more widely covered in the press. Letters pages are read by lots of people so provide a great opportunity to spread the sanitation message!

Here are some top tips for you to think about when writing to your local paper:

• In order to be published, letters to the editor need to be concise. Long letters are liable to be edited before publication or even discarded.

• In general terms you should aim for a letter to be around 12 lines long, but check through the letters page you are targeting and gauge the average letter length for the publication.

• Remember to include that you are a supporter of WaterAid in your letter!

You should be able to find contact details of how and where to send your letter to on the top of the paper’s letters page.

If you are unable to locate the email or postal address on the letters page, you could look up the contact details on the paper’s website.

To find out more about local newspapers, visit the Newspaper Society database website

If you need any help or advice, please get in touch with us at any time campaigns@wateraid.org.

You may wish to use some of the following facts in your letter:

• 2008 is the designated UN International Year of Sanitation.
• 2.5 billion people have nowhere clean and safe to go to the toilet.
• 5,000 children die every day from entirely preventable diarrhoeal diseases caused by a lack of sanitation and clean water.
• Sanitation and hygiene promotion are the most cost effective health interventions in reducing child mortality and yet they are almost totally overlooked.
• There are just seven years left to achieve the MDG 2015 targets. Progress towards meeting the sanitation and water.

We are always pleased to hear from you. Please let us know if you write to your local paper and also if your letter is published.