Spend a penny and raise bog standard
Toilet twinning‘antidote’to Black Friday frenzy
While today will see many people rushing for a bargain, a Tyndrum business is hoping it can encourage people to help others spend a penny.
Owners of award-winning diner The Real Food Cafe are encouraging their customers to support their antidote to Black Friday and instead mark the day as #CrapFriday.
The campaign will see the café donate the equivalent of a Black Friday discount to ToiletTwinning.org in a bid to raise funds to build toilets for impoverished communities in Malawi.
Black Friday, this year being held today (Friday, November 25), has been widely adopted as the unofficial start of the Christmas shopping frenzy with many retailers discounting their products to get things kick started.
But owner of the Real Food Café, Sarah Heward has launched an anti-Black Friday toilet twinning campaign ‘Insanity to Sanitation’ with the aim of raising a minimum of £1200 to build at least 20 toilets, each of which will be twinned with a Scottish toilet.
Teaming up with ToiletTwinning. org, the cafe is donating £1 each time a customer spends £20 on food, or purchases a selection of treats and goodies or one of their travel mugs - and they even have a ‘Twin-O-Meter’ blackboard to track their progress.
Once the toilets are built they will be twinned with the toilets at The Real Food Café which will have a plaque detailing where their twinned Malawian toilet is located.
Sarah said: “Most of us take having a clean toilet to use for granted, but for Malawians this is an incredible gift.
“The cost to build and sustain a toilet in Malawi, where they are in desperate need of proper sanitation, is just £60.
“We hope to provide at least 20 shared community toilets in areas where there are currently none, something that will help raise self-esteem and personal pride in the people that live there.
“I was inspired to do this after a friend twinned their toilet and then I twinned a toilet in the Democratic Republic of Congo for my mother’s Christmas present and I thought, why not twin the toilets at the café.”
They have also set up a Just Giving page where anyone can pledge their support.
To do so visit www.justgiving.com/ fundraising/Realfoodcafe.
The Real Food Café first opened its doors in 2005.