Progress, Potential, and Possibilities Podcast / Show Mr. Jack Sim - Founder, World Toilet Organization - Ending The Global Sanitation Crisis
Around 2 billion people worldwide still lack access to the basic tools of improved sanitation (toilets and latrines). One billion people still have to defecate in the open, and at least 10% of the world’s population is thought to consume food irrigated by raw wastewater. An estimated 800,000 children, younger than 5 years of age, perish from diarrhea each year, including conditions related to cholera, dysentery, hepatitis A, typhoid and polio. Mr. Jack Sim is the Founder of the World Toilet Organization (https://www.worldtoilet.org/), an organization established with the aim to break the taboo around toilets and this global sanitation crisis. Mr. Sim is also the founder of the Restroom Association of Singapore, the World Toilet Day initiative, and Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP) Hub. In 2001, for "creating good will and bringing the subject into the open" and "mobilizing national support in providing on-the-ground expertise", Mr. Sim received the Schwab Foundation award for Social Entrepreneur of the Year. In 2004, he was awarded the Singapore Green Plan Award 2012 by Singapore’s National Environment Agency (NEA) for his contribution to Environment. In 2006, he was invited to launch The German Toilet Organization in Berlin. He is also a founding member of American Restroom Association. In 2007, Mr. Sim became one of the key members to convene the Sustainable Sanitation Alliance (SuSanA) comprised of over 130 organizations active in the sanitation sector. He is also an Ashoka Global Fellow and in 2008 was named Hero of the Environment by Time Magazine. Mr. Sim also sits in the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Councils (GAC) for Water Security and also the GAC for Social Entrepreneurship. Mr. Sim graduated with a Masters in Public Administration from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in 2013. He was shortlisted for the Sarphati Sanitation Award in November 2013. Mr. Sim also founded the BOP HUB and a series of social businesses and startups. He is now constructing a 65,000 sq ft World Trade Center for the Poor in Singapore to coordinate an effort to transform the 4 billion poor into a massively efficient marketplace to end global poverty.