Delivery
How will my certificate be delivered? How long will it take?
My certificate hasn't arrived yet. My toilet is feeling lonely.
Can I twin my friend's toilet and have the certificate sent directly to them?
Can I change the delivery address after I've placed an order?
Payment
Who do I make my cheque out to?
PayPal has charged my card twice, can you give me a refund?
Can you give me your bank details and/or an invoice?
Can I use a Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) card or voucher to twin a toilet?
About the certificate
What does it say on the certificate? Is my name printed on it?
What are the longitude and latitude coordinates and how do I use them?
Is the photo of the toilet the actual toilet I have twinned with?
How your money helps
Is my donation paying for the toilet in the picture?
How much does it cost to build a toilet in Africa?
How much do you spend on administration?
Gift Aid
What difference will Gift Aid make? Can I Gift Aid if I live outside of the UK?
Twinning from outside of the UK
Is it possible to get involved in Toilet Twinning if you live outside of the UK?
How do I go about twinning my toilet from overseas?
How much does it cost to twin outside of the UK?
Will we still receive a certificate if we live overseas?
The loo roll
The toilet blocks
Information about the toilet blocks in Chad
Delivery
How will my certificate be delivered? How long does it take?
Certificates are sent second class via Royal Mail, and orders of more than four are couriered. You should allow up to 10 working days to arrive from placing your order. For more information on delivery and returns, click here.
My certificate hasn't arrived. My toilet is feeling lonely.
If your certificate hasn't arrived and it's been ten days or more, please contact us.
Can I twin my friend's toilet and have the certificate sent directly to them?
Yes – simply select a different delivery address when going through the checkout process online and enter your friend's details. If you are twinning a toilet via the post or on the phone, you can indicate on your order form or on the phone that you'd like the certificate to go to a different address.
Can I change the delivery address after I've placed an order?
Unfortunately we are unable to change the selected delivery address once an order has been placed, as the order fulfilment system is fully-automated.
Payment
CAF Cards & Vouchers
We accept CAF Vouchers if you are ordering certificates only – please make them payable to Cord. To twin a toilet using your CAF Card, please visit CAF Online and search for Toilet Twinning. Once we receive your donation from CAF we will send your certificate out to you.
PLEASE NOTE: You can not use CAF vouchers for ordering toilet rolls.
Who do I make cheques out to?
Please make cheques out to Cord. (Cord manages all the finances for Toilet Twinning).
Can you give me your bank details and/or an invoice?
We will happily issue you with an invoice, but can only accept payment by PayPal (through our website), credit card or cheque. need your organisation name, address and where you want the invoice sent or emailed, and we will send one out to you. Please contact us.
PayPal has charged my card twice, can you please give me a refund?
We will check our PayPal account and if there is more than one transaction in your name, we will refund the transaction(s) made in error. Please note: We are not generally able to refund donations, as it is against charity law. PayPal will only allow us to process refunds up to 60 days after the original transcation.
About the certificate
What does it say on the certificate? Is my name printed on it?
You can personalise your certificate with your name and/or the name of the person whose toilet is being twinned. The certificate also has the toilet's location and its longitude and latitude coordinates.
What are the longitude and latitude coordinates and how do I use them?
Longitude and latitude has been used for centuries by sailers, adventurers and explorers to help them pinpoint their exact location on earth. Here at Toilet Twinning we use it to keep track of our bogs. To pinpoint your latrine's exact location, you need to:
- Visit Google Maps online by typing 'maps.google.co.uk' into your web browser
- In the 'Search Maps' field, type the latitude number exactly as you see it on your certificate, including the “dash” at the start and the comma at the end. E.g. “-3.987150,”
- Enter a “space”
- Type the longitude number exactly as you see it. E.g. “29.918900”
- Click search maps
- The green arrow will be pointing to the location of your toilet!
Is the photo of the toilet the actual toilet I have twinned with?
We aim to make sure, where possible, that the picture on the certificate is the actual toilet at the location coordinates printed on the certificate. However, we are dependent on the technology and resources available to our staff and partners who are collecting the information – and they are often working in difficult situations with limited access to technology (including electricity!). If the photo is not an exact match, it will be a similar or nearby toilet.
How your money helps
Is my donation paying for the toilet in the picture?
The toilet in your photo shows you the toilet your loo has been twinned with. This toilet has been recently built and it is already being used by a family or community to do their business – and to stay safe and well.
The donation you make when twinning your toilet helps bring safe, clean and hygienic sanitation to another family or community, buy helping pay for latrines in other communties, hygiene education and clean water projects.
As sanitation programmes often dovetail with other transformational work – like education, or helping people to earn a living – a small percentage of your donation is also ring-fenced for tackling the greatest needs in the communities we work in.
How much does it cost to build a toilet in Africa?
The cost of a latrine varies dramatically depending where in the world you're building it. The two biggest factors are the type of latrine you're building (check out our website for information on different types of latrine designs) and therefore the cost of materials, and the cost of getting the materials to where they need to go. This means a latrine can cost anywhere between £10 - £100 to build and install.
How much do you spend on administration?
Both Cord and Tearfund (the charity partners behind Toilet Twinning) have very lean operating costs. For both, only 8% is spent on fundraising. The rest is spend either directly in the field or supporting field programmes.
Gift Aid
Gift Aid will add 25p in every pound to every £60 donation that you make – that's £15 – to every £60 toilet you twin. This is enough, in some countries, for us to build another entire latrine! Unfortunately Gift Aid is only an option if you are a UK taxpayer.
Toilet roll orders are not eligible for Gift Aid.
Twinning from outside of the UK
You can get involved with Toilet Twinning from anywhere in the world. You will receive a certificate, sent via Royal Mail, and postage is included in your donation. We have people who have twinned their toilets as far away as Tasmania! The easiest way is to visit our website at www.toilettwinning.org – you can do everything you need online!
The cost of twinning your toilet from overseas is GBP£60, converted to your local currency. Toilet Twinning uses PayPal for our online transactions. PayPal receives a quoted wholesale rate twice a day, then adds a 2.5% spread above this rate to determine the retail foreign exchange rate that is applied to transactions involving a currency conversion. PayPal suggest a good comparison for Toilet Twinners is the exchange rates quoted at airports or other consumer currency exchange shops.
The loo roll
What's on the loo roll?
We feature the photos and GPS coordinates of three latrines: one in Vetkhali, Bangladesh; the second in Pujehun district, Sierra Leone; the third in Asuret, Uganda.
How is the money from loo roll sales used?
We use all the money raised to fund Tearfund and Cord's water and sanitation work in poor communities across the world – bringing clean water, decent sanitation and hygiene education about hand-washing and other health-releated principles to tens of thousands of people.
The toilet blocks
Information about the toilet blocks in Chad
Through Toilet Twinning you are now able to twin with toilet blocks built in schools for refugee children in Eastern Chad.
Eighty per cent of the world's refugees are estimated to be women and children. That’s a whole lot of children who are torn from their known universe and carried along on a journey that must seem incredibly bewildering to them.
There are hundreds of thousands of refugees living in camps in Chad, many of them displaced from the Darfur region of neighbouring Sudan. Eastern Chad, which borders Sudan, is a semi-arid area with scarce natural resources, subject to droughts, floods and epidemics. So the influx of Sudanese refugees weighs heavily on the host communities. What’s more, their chances of returning home are slim.
Providing water and sanitation, food, shelter and health services are basic life-savers in this environment. Education is vital for all the usual reasons, but also to protect boys from forced recruitment into armies and discourage early marriage for girls.
Twinning your toilet or toilets with a school block in a refugee camp in Chad could bring profound transformation to those suffering the sting of dislocation.
