We tested our toilet stall backdrop (aka, our “Go Kit”) at a Diarrhea Innovations Group (DIG) meeting. The poo emoji stick was a fan favorite. Watch their Toilet Talks and take notes: you just might spot this loo during our event and conference schedule in 2018! (UPDATE: We il-loo-minated the Vaccines Against Shigella and ETEC Conference, or VASE, in June 2018. Check out the snapshots.) Photo credit: PATH.

Toilet Talks received an Honorable Mention in the Cause Advocacy category of PR Daily's 2018 Digital PR and Social Media Awards. So what's all the fuss about? 

For World Toilet Day 2017, DefeatDD launched our new comprehensive report, Stop the Cycle of Diarrheal Disease. The findings show that while deaths from diarrhea are decreasing, repeated gut infections can have devastating long-term consequences that keep families locked in a cycle of poor health and poverty. If awareness and attention to diarrhea wane, we risk neglecting children who may not reach their full potential without the healthiest possible start.

We need advocates to help us make a stink about diarrhea’s under-appreciated burden. So we took to the stalls.

Our request? Share your most passionate plea for greater attention to diarrheal disease… from a bathroom. Yes, we went literal with it.

We’ve always said if we can’t talk about diarrhea, we can’t defeat it, and there’s no better way to break the poo taboo than by putting a toilet in the spotlight.  

More than 40 people (and counting!) shared Toilet Talks from all over the world, from leaders in our field (like Mathu Santosham of the International Vaccine Access Center, Orin Levine of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Lindsay Coates of InterAction) to field staff in Haiti and Ethiopia to schoolgirls in India. We even got a Toilet Talk and interview with celebrity and sanitation enthusiast, Raya the muppet!

There were more than 1000 posts about the campaign, and a few celebrities joined the conversations, too. Any Gossip Girl fans out there?

We need your help to continue the potty talk all year long. You’ll use the bathroom at some point today; why not do your business and make a difference in one, er, sitting? Share a Toilet Talk using the hashtag #DefeatDD, and keep an eye out for our Go Kit next year at a conference near you.

• Read Stop the Cycle of Diarrheal Disease: A State of the Field
• Share a Toilet Talk! Read our how-to guide.