JACK SIM

FOUNDER OF RESTROOM ASSOCIATION OF SINGAPORE AND WORLD TOILET ORGANIZATION

If there is anyone more suited to talk about the business of doing one’s business, it is Jack Sim. “We go to the toilet six to eight times a day and spend three years of our lives inside the toilet; it’s a natural human process and we should not avoid talking about it,” says the founder of the World Toilet Organization (WTO), determined to break the taboo around the topic of toileting with humour and a light-hearted approach.

Since 2001, the global non-profit has been working to bring awareness to the sanitation crisis worldwide by lobbying governments, public and private sector stakeholders, and the international community to prioritise sanitation in the development agenda.

Around one billion people still face the indignity of defecating in the open today, and diarrhoeal diseases—a direct consequence of poor sanitation—kill more children every year than Aids, malaria and measles combined.

Through WTO’S advocacy work, revolutions in sanitation have begun taking place all over the world over the past two decades.

In 2013, the organisation achieved a milestone for the global sanitation movement when 122 countries co-sponsored a United Nations (UN) resolution tabled by the Singapore government to designate World Toilet Day, a WTO initiative held annually on November 19, as an official UN day.