“I design toilets,” declares Jasmine Burton, a statement that more often than not confounds people. Meet the Atlanta-born young entrepreneur, who calls herself a humanitarian design activist. Fuelled by the reality that pubescent girls frequently drop out of school due to the absence of toilets — a major crisis in India — Burton and her incredible team of designers have conceptualised and designed inexpensive mobile toilets called SafiChoo.
Burton was 18 when she heard a speech by Susan Davis (the founder of Improve International) on how nearly half the world had no access to a toilet. Inspired by it, when she graduated with a BS in Industrial Design from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Burton decided to make the sanitation crisis her life’s calling.
Shiba Kurian “Susan explained how women are vulnerable to sexual assault when they have to go outdoors to relive themselves. I know this has been in the news recently in India as well. The fact that something so simple could make a colossal difference in the lives and careers of women around the world spurred me to action,” Burton recounts.
Subsequent conferences that underscored ethnography and social impact work bolstered her enthusiasm to redesign water, sanitation and hygiene or WASH infrastructure. “According to UNICEF, 2.6 billion people lack sanitation facilities and 768 million people drink contaminated water; women and girls are the ones who have to deal the most with poor sanitation and water inequities,” point outs Burton. This ultimately led to her founding a social impact start-up called Wish for WASH, in December 2014. That is the year Burton and her team won the Georgia Tech InVenture Prize Competition, the largest undergraduate invention competition in the United States, for designing an inexpensive mobile toilet called SafiChoo.
Burton is serving as a Global Health Corps fellow, as a Design Specialist at Society for Family Health, a Zambia-based organisation.
(Being carted away. Photo: Special arrangement)
In 2014, Burton and her team won the Georgia Tech InVenture Prize Competition, the largest undergraduate invention competition in the United States, for designing an inexpensive mobile toilet called SafiChoo.
SafiChoo, which roughly translates to ‘Clean Toilet’ in Swahili, is Wish for WASH’s first line of sanitation relief products. Designed to reduce oral-faecal contamination and the spread of waterborne diseases, the toilet meets both hygienic and ergonomic criteria. “After a few interactions with the users, we changed the initial three-part drawer system of collecting and the sit-squat seat. Instead, using a human-centred design principle, they included a wider toilet bowl and a bucket-based waste collection system.
Now, the team is also piloting a genital-washing device that uses less water, and a waste collection/ filtration system to deposit waste into containers for easy collection and prevent the contamination of densely populated environments. “The benefit of this design is that it is modular and enables the user to choose what element of the toilet best meets their needs,” says Burton.
The cash prize they won for SafiChoo funded their initial prototyping and other associated activities at the Kakuma Refugee camp in Kenya, where they conducted their initial pilot in tandem with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Norwegian Refugee Council, under the auspices of Sanivation, a crowd-funded start-up. Currently, the team is in the Research and Design phase of production, fundraising for the pilot via Indiegogo, an international crowdfunding platform.
(Jasmine Burton. Photo: Special arrangement)
Living in Lusaka, Zambia, Burton and her team are testing another beta version of the SafiChoo. “We intend to test about five versions of the toilet to help us cull sufficient data to determine its proof of concept and present it to international NGOs or relief organisations in 2016,” says the 23-year-old entrepreneur. SafiChoo is at present manufactured as a production prototype. “We do not have a finalised product, yet as we are awaiting feedback from end users about the latest design changes. However, if all goes well, we hope to sell our unit for $50 (Rs. 3,341) or less once it goes to scale and is mass produced.”
So will Wish for WASH make its way to India soon? “Right now, we are focusing on designing a product that can be deployed by international relief organisations; particularly, as it addresses the increasing number of refugees, asylum seekers and disaster-affected people around the world. However, my ideal goal is to expand to India and partner with existing sanitation organisations after its success in Southern Africa. I also want to hone our young team’s core competencies so that we make maximum impact in India,” says Burton.
Inspiring more young minds to make a significant contribution to building communities, she suggests: “Gain a hard skill, be it coding, designing, engineering, or even knowing a language, to ensure a more holistic and diverse approach to social impact and humanitarian work. Increase your global awareness by constantly watching the news, reading newspapers, and updating yourself on current humanitarian events or crises. Align yourself with insightful mentors and partners who are seeking to make similar changes and with whom your work parallels. That makes a world of a difference!”
