FAQs

Like all the greatest ideas, Toilet Twinning was born in the bathroom.

It was in fact a concept conceived by our founder charity, Cord – a peace and reconciliation NGO.

Back in 2008, Cord had an ‘alternative gift’ catalogue and the wife of one of Cord’s managers sponsored a bog in Burundi as a Christmas present to her husband.

A picture of a latrine had a sticky note attached to it, bearing the words: ‘I’ve twinned your loo.’

After a few months of developing and tweaking the concept, Cord launched Toilet Twinning. The initial target – to twin 500 toilets in Burundi – was reached in just three months. On a roll, Cord joined forces with Tearfund in 2010 to extend the number of countries where toilets could be twinned. Cord handed over the Toilet Twinning baton to Tearfund in 2015, enabling Cord to focus on its peace-building work. By then, Toilet Twinning had raised more than £2.3 million, and had twinned about 35,000 toilets in more than 40 countries. The story continues…

On Friday, March 20, 2020, we launched Tap Twinning as an urgent response to coronavirus. For every £60 donation that we receive as a result of supporters twinning their taps, we are funding an urgent package of handwashing advice and hygiene promotion in 45 countries.  

Toilet Twinning raises funds in support of Tearfund’s Water and Sanitation programme in around 25 countries across the world.

Tearfund works through local church partners because it is recognised that local churches are well-placed to serve local people, because they tend to know who is most in need and they can implement culturally-appropriate, cost-effective, sustainable development programmes. This is recognised by UK AID; the UK Government makes significant grants to agencies like Tearfund because of the integrity of their approach, which is opposed to proselytism.

Our partners work with the whole community to set up local water and sanitation committees; the programmes benefit people of all faiths, and none. Everyone in the community benefits as our partners explain the link between sanitation and health, and encourage households to build toilets, have clean water, and learn about hygiene principles.

There maybe a slight delay in receiving your order during the current postal strikes. We are doing everything we can to send orders earlier to make sure you receive your order on time.

Certificates within the UK are sent second class via Royal Mail. Our standard turnaround time for certificates is 5-6 days; however, you should allow up to 10 working days for your certificate to arrive after placing your order, especially during our busy Christmas months of November and December. If your certificate is for a gift and the big day is looming, please email us at [email protected] and we’ll do everything we can to get your order out as quickly as possible.

For international orders, please allow 15 working days for European orders to be delivered, and 20 working days for orders to the rest of the world.

We ask you to consider adding a voluntary donation of £4 to cover the cost of sending a certificate, loo roll or soap to an address within the UK. If you choose to send a Gift Set within the UK, a mandatory charge of £5 will be added to your order to cover the additional P&P costs.

You can also download a gift card to print yourself directly here:

Anniversary

Birthday

Christmas

Christmas gift box

Engagement

Father’s Day

Mother’s Day

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New home

Valentines

Wedding

Place an order in the normal way. If you tick that it’s a gift, you’ll see a ‘cutting it fine’ section. If you say ‘yes’ to cutting it fine, you can select a voucher from the options presented, and the voucher will be attached to your confirmation email that you receive when you complete your order. Alternatively, you can simply make a donation or twin and then visit the Resources section to download a voucher from the ‘Voucher’ section.

If your certificate hasn’t arrived and it’s been ten days or more, please get in touch. If you twinned the toilet in celebration of a special occasion and need it urgently (such as a wedding or a birthday) please do let us know and we will email you a Toilet Twinning voucher which you can print off and give to your friend/relative.

For international orders, please allow 15 working days for European orders to be delivered, and 20 working days for orders to the rest of the world.

You can personalise your certificate with your name and/or the name of the person whose toilet is being twinned. We reserve the right to amend your text.

The certificate also gives your latrine’s location and a set of longitude and latitude coordinates for that village.

Yes – simply select a different delivery address when going through the checkout process 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 over the phone that you’d like the certificate to go to a different address. We can also include a small gift card with a message if you request this via email or phone.

Longitude and latitude has been used for centuries by sailors, adventurers and explorers to help them pinpoint their exact location on earth. Here at Toilet Twinning we use it to keep track of the village locations where families are building toilets as a result of our educational programmes. We show the coordinates in decimal degrees, so please be sure to include the minus symbol if it’s on your certificate.

To pinpoint the village location of the latrine photographed, 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 “minus” at the start, if there is one, 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 red pointer will be pointing to the village location of your toilet!

Unfortunately, sometimes the images on Google Maps are not up-to-date, and occasionally there are inaccuracies on Google Maps with place names and spelling etc., especially when it involves small and remote towns in rural areas.

For a while, we have not been giving exact GPS locations for latrines in Myanmar, due to security concerns. No details are currently given for the location of our toilets in Afghanistan to ensure our local partners’ security.

As of July 2018, we have taken the decision that all certificates will only feature a set of GPS coordinates for the village location in which the toilet twin is situated, rather than the exact GPS location of the toilet photographed. This is to protect the privacy of all families who have their toilets featured within the Toilet Twinning initiative, and to make our administrative processes more efficient.

We will send a Toilet Twinning certificate to pretty much anywhere in the world! The cost of twinning your toilet from overseas is £60 sterling, converted to your local currency. A good comparison is the exchange rates quoted at airports or other consumer currency exchange shops. A £9 sterling mandatory postage charge is added to your overseas order. If you choose to send a Gift Set overseas, a mandatory charge of £14 will be added to your order to cover the costs of overseas postage and packaging.

For international orders, please allow 15 working days for European orders to be delivered, and 20 working days for orders to the rest of the world.

Due to recent changes in regulations, orders shipped outside the UK, including to the EU, may be subject to local VAT and customs duties. Where this is the case, the person taking delivery of the order will be charged by the local carrier. 

Once you have completed your order you will have the option to create a supporter account by adding a password. This means next time you donate you can login to your account and your name and address will automatically be populated to save time.

If you forget your password or want to change it, click ‘Forgotten Password?’ and enter your email address. An email will be sent to your email address with a link to ‘Reset Password’ this will take you to the website and you can enter in your new password. If you do not receive an email in your inbox, please check your ‘Spam’ folder.

Tap Twinning is a campaign to help improve access to safe, clean water and handwashing facilities in some of the poorest communities on the planet. It invites you to twin your tap with a sustainable water system such as a solar-powered water pump or gravity-fed water tank. In return, we will send you a framed certificate showing the water infrastructure that you have twinned with. We will use your Tap Twinning donation to help vulnerable communities have access to sustainable, reliable and affordable clean water. We will also use your donation to promote good hygiene, including handwashing which is the single most effective way to stop the spread of infection.

We originally launched Tap Twinning in March 2020 to raise urgent funds to help limit the spread of coronavirus in the vulnerable communities where we work. During the first months of the pandemic, donations raised through this emergency appeal helped improve communities’ access to handwashing facilities and clean water, as well as hygiene products such as soap. Donations were also vital to fund our partners’ public health campaigns in 35+ countries, teaching people how to protect themselves and limit the spread of Covid-19.

Through our partners, we work closely with local communities to ensure their buy-in and ownership, right from the very beginning. We want to hear local opinions and ensure projects reflect the needs of everyone, including the most vulnerable. We involve communities in decisions over everything from the type of water system they need to the siting of water points. Once the water system is installed, the community undertake to monitor and maintain it, generally through a Water Committee supported by an external organisation. In most cases, the community help fund this maintenance service by paying a small fee for their water use, as means allow.

For a one-off donation of £60 you can twin your tap. We’ll send you a Tap Twinning certificate for every multiple of £60.

We will send you a framed Tap Twinning certificate that shows the tap or water pump that you are twinned with. We hope that you will want to put this certificate next to a tap as a reminder of how you have helped, and also to remind you and your family of the importance of handwashing.

You have a choice of countries, just as you do when you twin your toilet. However, to keep our costs to a minimum, we have taken the decision to use representative photos to show you how your money will be spent across all the countries where we work. As such, you will have a photo of someone using a water point in their community. We are unable to give you specific locations, or GPS coordinates, for safeguarding reasons.

Online: The easiest way is on here on the website where you can pay by debit or credit card.

Cheque: If you would like to pay by cheque, please make it payable to Toilet Twinning, and send it with your an order form (which can be downloaded from the resources page of the website)
To: Toilet Twinning, 1052-1054 Christchurch Road, Bournemouth, Dorset, BH7 6DS

BACS Transfer: a payment can be made directly to the Toilet Twinning account, please contact us by email at [email protected] or phone 0300 321 3217 for our bank details or download this leaflet.

Please include your name/school/organisation details in the reference field and email us with details of amount and date of transfer and wether you would like any certificates so we can track your donation.

If you would like to make regular donations please contact us via email [email protected] or call 0300 321 3217 and we will send you out a standing order form to complete.

We will happily issue you with an invoice, please contact us by email at [email protected] with details of your organisation name, address and donation amount and we will send one out to you.

If you prefer to donate via BACS, our bank details are:

Account name     Toilet Twinning
Bank                       Barclays
Account                 53798860
Sort code              20-00-00
Reference             TTW then your name/school/organisation details

Toilet Twinning funds the work of international relief and development agency Tearfund. Your donation is used to provide clean water, basic sanitation, and hygiene education.

We don’t link individual donations from Toilet Twinning to specific villages, as the cost of administering this would reduce how much we are able to spend on actually delivering water & sanitation programmes. With your donation, our programmes ensure that people have access to clean water, learn about the importance of building a latrine and maintaining it, and also learn about hygiene principles such as hand-washing.

Water, sanitation and hygiene education work together to prevent the spread of disease. Children are healthier, and able to go to school; parents are well enough to work their land and grow enough food to feed their family. With better health, and more ability to earn a living, men and women discover the potential that lies within them to bring transformation.

When you twin your loo with a household latrine for £60, or a block of toilets, or four single toilets, for £240, you will receive a framed certificate (this makes an ideal present for someone!). The certificate features a photo of your twinned toilet or twinned block, and generally its coordinates so you can find it on Google Maps.

The Gift Aid System allows Toilet Twinning to reclaim the tax on donations from UK taxpayers.

Toilet Twinning can claim 25% back on every donation/toilet twinned ie. that’s £15 added to every £60 toilet twin – at no cost to you.

You can make a Gift Aid declaration to Toilet Twinning if you are a UK taxpayer by completing the Gift Aid details when making payment on our website, or by completing the Gift Aid section on our order forms.

Toilet rolls and soap bars are not eligible for Gift Aid.

We accept donations through CAF Vouchers/Stewardship Vouchers & Charities Trust Vouchers – please make them payable to Tearfund, and post them to us with your completed order form (which can be downloaded from the resources page of the website) To: Toilet Twinning, 1052-1054 Christchurch Road, Bournemouth, Dorset, BH7 6DS

To twin a toilet using your CAF Card, please visit CAF Online and search for Tearfund. (Tearfund manages all the CAF finances for Toilet Twinning).

Please write ‘Reference Toilet Twinning’ under Special Instructions. Once you have made your donation please contact us by email at [email protected] or telephone 0300 321 3217 to confirm the name and address of where you would like your Toilet Twin certificates sent.

As soon as we receive your donation from CAF we will send your certificate out to you.

PLEASE NOTE: You cannot use CAF vouchers/CAF card for ordering toilet rolls, soap or Gift Boxes.

To Twin a toilet or make a donation via your Stewardship account – please visit the Stewardship Website and search for Tearfund. (Tearfund manages all the Stewardship finances for Toilet Twinning).

When making your donation to Stewardship please add the reference “Toilet Twinning”. 

Once you have made your donation please contact us by email at [email protected] or telephone 0300 321 3217 to confirm the name and address of where you would like your Toilet Twin certificates sent.

As soon as we receive your donation from Stewardship we will send your certificate out to you.

PLEASE NOTE: You cannot use Stewardship vouchers/Stewardship account for ordering toilet rolls, soap or Gift Boxes.

If you need to change any of your details, please can you make sure you contact us within 24 hours of placing your order, and we will be able to help: [email protected]; 0300 321 3217.

If you have been charged twice, we will check our account and if there is more than one transaction in your name, we can 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 transaction.

Tearfund (the charity that Toilet Twinning is part of) has very lean operating costs. Only 13% is spent on fundraising. The rest is spent either directly in the field or supporting field programmes.

The idea of Toilet Twinning is that you display a picture of a latrine, with its GPS coordinates, in your toilet at home – to show that it’s twinned. Some months, we find that around 20% of our donations come from people who say they’ve seen a certificate in someone else’s loo. So initially it may not seem beneficial to spend money on providing photos, but in the long run we have found that it generates a lot more support, and so we can invest in more water and sanitation projects long term.

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 approach’ in the What We Do section) 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 less than £60, or a lot more than £60, but overall, £60 is roughly the average cost across all our programmes.

We ask our local partners to send us photos of toilets built as a result of their programmes, so that we can use these photos on our Toilet Twinning certificates. We have supplied our partners with cameras, and they email photos every few months to us, as toilets are built. As we’re sure you can imagine, there are lots of logistics involved in our partners taking the photos, including their staff time, fuel costs to the field, etc. Because of these costs, and the diligence we exercise in minimising our administration overheads, we twin each toilet photo a maximum of ten times and each school block photo a maximum of 20 times – so we get £600 in twinning donations for each latrine photograph and £4,800 in donations for each school block photograph gathered by our partners. This means it’s possible that you would see your toilet twin in another toilet in the UK – but unlikely.

We think it’s important that Toilet Twinning sends out physical certificates to everyone who twins – as these certificates are a really low-cost way of spreading the word about Toilet Twinning’s work; we currently receive around 20% of our donations each month from people who say that they’re doing it because they’ve seen a certificate in someone else’s loo. So the certificates are a great way of generating funds, as well as showing you just what a difference your donation makes.

Increasing our twinning ratio

Since the beginning of March 2020, there have been major restrictions in place, including lockdowns, in nearly all of the countries where we work. This has made it impossible for our partners to go into the field to take photos of the toilets that have been built by families as a result of the education/facilitation that they have conducted within their community mobilisation programmes. Even if the rate of infection were to drop, and restrictions in travel were to ease in some of the countries where we work, our partners have so many pressing things to do right now to respond to Covid-19, and urgently educate communities about how to protect themselves from the disease through handwashing and other measures, it is impossible for them to carry out their evaluation and monitoring work that would include the taking of photos. As such, the temporary decision to increase the twinning ratio from 10 twins per photo to 30 twins per photo will be in place for as long as the pandemic continues.

To get an indication of how many toilets have been built between 2011 and now, you can see the number of Toilets that have been Twinned in the “Transparency” page of the “What we do” section.

One of our main priorities is the empowerment of people living in poverty. As such, we want to make sure that a sanitation programme is owned by the communities that we work with – so they are able to maintain their latrines in the long term. They choose to build latrines with readily available materials and this means that the latrines do differ aesthetically from community to community.

It generally takes us between three and six years to educate a community to the point where the residents will keep going with all that they have learnt and ensure their toilets are used, maintained, and replaced when necessary. In terms of the initial household latrine that is built by the family, the pit will last around 3-6 years – depending on the number of people in the household, and the depth of the pit. By six years, the pit is likely to be full. Because the family will have benefited from improved health and more productivity, it is likely that the family will be able to afford to build a new pit latrine to replace the one that is now full. Wherever possible, a latrine featured in a Toilet Twinning certificate has been built as a result of a programme of education and training, and subsidisation only when absolutely necessary. By working in this way, we ensure our programmes are sustainable, and can be replicated across communities – so that the ripple effect ensures that transformation continues to unfold, and more and more people are able to get out of poverty. So – our simple message is this: a toilet – or at least toilet education – is a gift that lasts a lifetime.

The water and sanitation experts within our local partner organisations spend quite a bit of time with the community, talking through their sanitation issues and how to best address them. We do not support or promote a single, one-size-fits-all model across our sanitation programmes: the physical and socio-cultural contexts determine the type of latrine that is built. Concrete is more typically used in areas where the soil is very unstable and will cause the pit to collapse if it is not supported. Using concrete for the lining of a pit is not the most common (or preferred) way. However, it is the most practical approach particularly in school/institutional latrine blocks, where cubicles and their underlying pits are built closely together, and are routinely emptied, and so need to be robust. We certainly embrace the concept of composting latrines, and we use the ecological sanitation approach in various countries, such as Uganda and DRC. Composting advantages include producing valuable fertiliser and soil conditioner, and pits can be shallower as they’re used cyclically to allow for decomposition, which means less work in construction and less chance of contaminating a water table. A great challenge, however, is introducing the Ecosan / composting in the first place: to many people, the use of “humanure” is a definite “no”: using village champions and demonstrator households takes time.

Toilet Twinning is a fundraising venture based in the UK, and those who benefit from a new latrine are not aware of Toilet Twinning’s existence. Tearfund works through a network of local partners who build relationship with poor communities and work to empower them to find solutions to their problems. Families therefore have a high degree of ownership concerning the toilet they have built. We highly value the relationship between local partners and communities, and we always aim to work in a way that is culturally sensitive. We hope you understand that unfortunately it is not possible for us to arrange such trips at the moment.

Toilet Twinning is a fundraising arm of Tearfund, and as such, Tearfund’s international team ensures that funds sent to partners are being used for intended purposes. Country directors physically check that activities being reported on are consistent with the partner’s approved proposal. On a quarterly basis, Tearfund’s in-country projects officer or coordinator will undertake field visits. The monitoring visit is undertaken in pairs i.e. a projects officer/coordinator goes with the finance officer to assess the physical evidence of the reported activities against the recorded expenditures. The aspect of value-for-money for each activity / asset is assessed as part of this audit.

Tearfund insists on field visits being conducted by both programme and finance staff so that they can talk to local people (beneficiaries), the local leaders, and other stakeholders in the implementation area, to ensure that the reports being sent in are not talking about other agencies’ project achievements/activities. If Tearfund’s country directors notice any management challenges, they arrange meetings with the Board of Directors of local partners – to raise any observed issues that require performance management.

We have a map of our supporters in the UK and worldwide so that you can see your own twinning activity (and that of others nearby!). If you’re not on the map, and want to be, please get in touch via email ([email protected]) or call us on 0300 321 3217.

We cannot show overseas latrines on a map due to our need to protect the privacy and security of the communities that we work with.

On one level, every country featured in Toilet Twinning is an example of where the need is greatest globally – as we choose to work in 25 countries where poverty is extreme. We work with communities that are marginalised, and usually extremely remote, and where governments fail to provide adequate water and sanitation.

We work in conflict-affected areas and regions hit by natural disasters, as well as extremely poor communities with long-term development needs.

Every toilet twin celebrates a new toilet for a family living in a poorer country, and the average size of a household is six people, for every £60 donation represents help for one family, six people.

However, once a family has the knowledge about the link between sanitation and health, they will go on to tell other family members, or people in neighbouring villages, about the importance of building a toilet – so the multiplication effect of your donation will be far greater than help for a household. It will, over the years, represent transformation for many more people without a doubt.

Also, the impact over generations to come is immeasurable, as our sustainable programmes are aimed at behaviour change and cultural change that will last beyond our immediate lifetime as knowledge is passed down from generation to generation.

We produce a gift range – perfect as alternative gifts which also spread awareness.

The loo roll (£8) is boxed and features the photos and GPS coordinates of four latrines. The soap (£6) is a boxed, 100g ℮ vanilla and almond square bar stamped with the Toilet Twinning logo*.

Please note that loo rolls and soap purchases are not eligible for gift aid, so CAF vouchers cannot be used.

Please note that loo rolls and soap purchases cannot be made using CAF/Stewardship and are not eligible for Gift Aid.

*We are changing suppliers and the soap received may not be the one pictured or the same fragrance.

We use all the money raised to fund Tearfund’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-related principles to tens of thousands of people.

The gift set (£80) consists of a twinned toilet (framed certificate), a boxed loo roll and a boxed soap: all in a beautiful presentation box. If you apply gift aid to your order, this will only be applied to the £60 twinning donation (gift aid rules indicate that the £20 donation for the soap, loo roll and presentation box is ineligible).

You can use CAF or Stewardship for the Toilet Twinning element of a gift set order; the remaining £20 will require a different payment method.

Yes! We are committed to making our products as environmentally friendly as possible and can confirm that both our frames and gift boxes are 100% recyclable.  Our gift box cardboard and paper are from fully registered mills and sourced from responsibly managed forests.

In March 2020, Toilet Twinning launched the Tap Twinning appeal as an urgent response to the COVID-19 pandemic. People responded with incredible generosity – and donated £500,000 in a matter of weeks. 

COVID-19 continues to wreak havoc in many of the countries where we work – and we are raising urgent funds for acute needs through our Toilet Twinning Appeals website. 

In May 2021 we launched Fridge Twinning to provide emergency food and livelihoods support in more than 20 countries. Nations currently on the brink of widespread famine include Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Yemen, South Sudan and Democratic Republic of Congo.