University students are flying to India to build toilets in schools as part of a project to boost education for children and share skills and knowledge.
The group, from De Montfort University Leicester (DMU) will head out to Indore in the state of Madhya Pradesh next week to undertake the work.
Millions of schoolchildren, particularly girls, drop out of education by the age of 14 due to a lack of washroom facilities.
Students at DMU have been working to address this in their own small way by working with Leicester schools to highlight the issue and raise funds for the materials needed to build the toilets.
Soar Valley College in Leicester is just one of the schools supporting them by raising funds towards the trip. The school held a bake sale and ran a sponsored non-uniform day to help towards the cost of the journey.
The project is being run by DMU's Square Mile programme which aims to connect the university with different communities, and #DMUglobal which works to give students international experiences as part of their studies.
DMU Square Mile manager Mark Charlton said: "This is a great opportunity for two key DMU projects to work together for significant impact. Our students will be able to build a washroom in a school which will make such a difference to the children who go there. The schools in Indore have asked for this support, and we are delighted that we can get involved."
DMU has a long-standing partnership with Daly College, Indore. Staff and students have been working together on the campaign since July last year.
"It's great to see it coming together," said Mark. "I visited a school in Indore in the summer last year to see the impact of a washroom on school life and children's education and it was absolutely incredible. Toilets are something we take for granted, I saw first hand that without them, children's health and education suffers and creates a poverty cycle."
Researchers from DMU's Institute of Energy and Sustainable Development (IESD) will also be part of the team, looking at how washrooms can be built in future to harness natural resources like rainfall and solar power.
Students have prepared for the trip by working in local schools in Leicester to raise awareness of a need for more washrooms in schools.
According to Unicef, 80 million children out of 200 million enrolled in India are likely to drop out of education before completing their schooling.
Researchers at DMU also aim to work with schools discover if the toilets have an impact on pupil retention over time.
* To support this campaign or find out more, contact squaremile@dmu.ac.uk
Posted on Monday 16 February 2015