NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

“Your future becomes brilliant if you have a toilet.”

For many, the toilet is a necessary but everyday item that we take for granted. For people like Madeleine Razafindramasy from Madagascar, it’s a treasured new life-saving item that has transformed her life.

Madeleine used to walk for 6km to go to the toilet in the open: “It was threatening and dirty. It was frightening too, so most of the time we went with friends. There are men who are not really nice. When they see lonely woman there they rape them or something like that. I know something like that already happened. I don’t want my daughter to go to that place. I’m teaching her to always use the toilet instead.”