In order to encourage focused advocacy activities in the 2008 International Year of Sanitation (IYS), the United Nations (UN)-Water Task Force on Sanitation has prepared an advocacy and media kit in English, French, and Spanish, available online. The task force, coordinated by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), hopes to raise awareness and promote sanitation because, at the current rate of progress, too many countries will not reach the 2015 Millennium Development Goal (MDG) sanitation target: to halve the number of people without access to basic sanitation, before 2026.

The kit's intended users are policy makers, journalists, and sanitation actors and advocates, including business people, religious leaders, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), teachers, communities, and households. The materials are intended to provide policy makers with the resources they need to make decisions and implement them. Another objective is to reach journalists because the media are key players in the sanitation struggle for influencing policy and stimulating individual behavioural change.

The kit includes: fact sheets; a booklet with the five key messages; a communication matrix; the official IYS poster; an advocacy guide for sanitation; a compilation of web links, talking points; a MS PowerPoint presentation; interviews in print and in audio format; and resource materials.


Among the materials available through the website are a sampling below:


Click here to view the poster in English in PDF format.


Click here for the key message booklet in PDF format.


Click here for an audio interview with Ifeoma Charles-Monwuba, WaterAid, Abuja, Nigeria (by Anke Rasper, Deutsche Welle).

English, French, and Spanish

Email from Saskia Castelein to Soul Beat Africa on June 12 2008.