It’s that time of the year again — it’s time to talk about poop! Every year on November 19, World Toilet Day, the global health community shines a spotlight on the issue of water and sanitation, giving the world a chance to push the agenda for this taboo topic.

About 2.6 billion people do not have access to proper, clean sanitation (in other words, they don’t have any toilets), and as a result, they must face the consequences: disease, humiliation and poor hygiene.

People need to know these facts, and that’s where you come in. Help the international development community spread the word about this important day by donating your voice to World Toilet Day.

Go to Water.org’s Talk Sh*t All Week website and allow them to post daily status updates for World Toilet Day on your Facebook or Twitter account. They’ll post interesting, facts, stats and links from today to November 19. Click on the graphic below to get started:

By lending your voice, you’ll be able to help us raise a big stink about the fact that billions live without toilets and help Water.org further their cause. Everyone deserves to take a safe poop, so let’s cut the crap.

Imagine if you could be the spokesperson for your favorite nonprofit for a few moments. What would you say? How would you mobilize their audience to take action against the world’s injustices? What issues would you focus on?

Water.org, in partnership with Twitter, is giving one lucky person the opportunity to do just that. During the month of August, water and sanitation activists can enter their competition to take over — or “twakeover”– their Twitter handle, @water, for an entire week.

To become Water.org’s “Twee-EO,” you’ll need to tweet, Facebook update, email, Buzz, tumble, Google+ your heart out and get as many votes as possible on your profile page. During the week of September 5, the winner will be able to tweet, RT, mention anything they want to @water’s 400,000-plus Twitter followers — on the topic of water and sanitation, of course.

As ONE’s resident Twitter handler, I will be honest — tweeting for an organization is a whole lot of fun. But it’s also hard work, too. Making people care about our issues isn’t easy. As they say in Spiderman, “with great power comes great responsibility.” Good luck!

World Water Day is on March 22. To you, it may be just another day. But for teenager Haregeweyni Teklay, it’s a day for celebration and giving thanks.

Until the Water.org water project brought a well to her rural Ethiopian village, Haregeweyni spent two to three hours walking to the nearest river –- and carrying on her back -– the five gallons of water that would barely meet her family’s daily survival needs. Often, this water was contaminated. Today, she has clean water right by her home, better health, and more time for school.

Unfortunately, for every person like Haregeweyni who gains access to safe water, many millions continue to go without. You can help change this.

A coalition of nearly 25 nonprofits have come together to activate a social media awareness campaign starting Monday, March 21, in celebration of Water Day. It is a 100 percent online/viral campaign. You’re invited to “donate your voice” on either Twitter of Facebook to the water cause for one week. Starting Friday, March 18 and for one week, you’ll have one item posted each weekday to your account.

Signing up takes less than a minute and our collective voice will raise awareness for this most important issue. Visit http://water.org/waterday to sign up. You can disconnect your account at any time. Follow the #water2011 hashtag this week to see how it’s going http://waterday.org/reporting. Once you sign up, you can see all of the scheduled posts.

On behalf of the nearly one in eight people on earth who don’t have clean water, thank you. Your voice will help spur the awareness and action needed to bring this most basic necessity to those in need

Screenshot of the site — pretty cool, right?

That’s why we’re really excited about Water.org’s latest project, my.Water.org. It’s an interactive online resource that allows people to see firsthand how water projects unfold in the real world, particularly in Haiti. You can choose a community and get weekly field reports — in the form of photos, videos and updates — from local certified partners as they deliver water solutions to the villagers.

In the Haitian village of Logalit, for example, you can find out how many households there are (60), how many of those households have latrines (46) and how many minutes it takes them to get to the nearest water source (up to 30!). You can even take a look at a photo of a villager grinding millet that reporter Kiki took just a couple of days ago.

If you have a moment, sign up for my.Water.org and play around on the website. It’s easy to use and you can even use your Facebook account to log in. And let us know what you think of the site in the comments below.

And boy, did you help spread the word. By Friday over 14,000 people had donated their Twitter and/or Facebook statuses, letting people across the globe know about the more than 200 million people who have gained access to clean water in the past 10 years.

A big thank you to everyone for sharing their voice—but there’s still much more to do. Over 880 million people still don’t have access to clean water and 2.5 billion don’t have access to adequate sanitation. So click here to learn much more about the issue, with everything from policy briefs and blog posts to quick facts and additional partner resources. Let’s make this crisis history.

It couldn’t be simpler. Go to oneweekforwater.org and sign up to donate your Facebook and Twitter status for World Water Week. When you donate your online status, ONE and Water.org will post updates on your Facebook and/or Twitter pages, change your profile picture and even update your background to raise awareness about water and sanitation.

Don’t miss the chance join thousands in celebrating clean, safe water all next week. Head to oneweekforwater.org and sign up today!

Remember playing the Oregon Trail game growing up? You chose your companions, forded rivers with your oxen, went hunting, and occasionally had a brief funeral for someone on your team lost to measles, a snakebite, dysentery, typhoid, cholera, and diarrhea.

Would you believe that MILLIONS of people are suffering from some of those same diseases today? Yes: dysentery, typhoid, cholera, and diarrhea. And what do they have in common? They are the result of unsafe drinking water and no safe place to defecate, no toilet. This is why these preventable diseases kill millions of people, mostly children, in the developing world today.

This is why today, November 19, is World Toilet Day. To raise awareness of the fact that one in four people on this planet don’t have access to a toilet. To raise awareness to the face that lack of sanitation is the world’s biggest cause of infection. And In India alone, the number of people who practice open defecation is double the population of the U.S.

Just as you were in that wagon with your companions on the Oregon Trail, risking your life for the promise of a better one, so we invite you to hop on our wagon today. Our vision: global access to safe water and sanitation. We have been working steadily towards this vision for 20 years. Join us and many other organizations on World Toilet Day to acknowledge the life-saving power of the toilet and appreciate the toilets in our lives. Join us as we raise a stink about the global lack of sanitation that causes not only embarrassment, concerns for safety, and lack of dignity, but preventable disease, illness, and all too often, death.

Seeing these diseases eradicated is possible, today. Will you “ford the river” with us?

Sign this online petition demanding action from global leaders to urgently address the sanitation crisis.

Learn more about World Toilet Day and sign up for monthly updates from Water.org here.

Haiti which has suffered several hurricanes recently has had particular trouble bringing clean water to rural communities. Water.org will commit to helping bring water to a minimum of 50,000 people by investing at least 2 million dollars in work with local NGO’s.

We’ll have more on this and President Obama who will be addressing the meeting shortly.

-Chris Scott

UPDATE: Here’s video of the entire opening plenary.

Photo from Partners in Health

The size of Maryland. Nine million people. A history of political instability. Natural disasters. Health crises. A ravaged environment. Severe need for clean water and respectable sanitation. The poorest country in the Western hemisphere and one of the poorest in the world. Billions have been invested and yet the cycle of despair continues.

What hope can Haiti rest on?

As the United Nations Special Envoy to Haiti, President Bill Clinton has urged the thousands of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working in Haiti to better coordinate to make a greater impact. One of President Clinton’s areas of focus is their water crisis, as safe water is a prerequisite for human life and the foundation of all human development efforts.

Haiti is water-stressed, meaning that less than one percent of its available water resources are in use. While the potential for groundwater exists in some of the coastal and mountainous areas, the challenge is accessing it. Even today, no Haitian city has a centralized sewage system and there are virtually no water treatment facilities for the general public. According to the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Program report, piped water coverage in urban areas is only 21 percent.

Water mafias have sprung up in several Haitian cities, creating an informal water vending market that takes advantage of citizens. This practice is common in places with no infrastructure, and often people pay five to 10 times more money for vended water than they would for piped water.

Despite these conditions, work continues with grant-based initiatives on the ground. We also continue to explore new financing and use-rating models that could bring even longer-term sustainability to the water sector in counties like Haiti.

In light of World Water Week this week, August 17-23, water.org encourages you to look to Haiti and ask what you can do now. Learn. Advocate. Research. Find and support your favorite NGO that is making a difference there. Donate your time and talents to spread the word. We are in this thing together as we share a common need for safe water and proper sanitation. We can ignore it, or we can take steps towards lasting change.

-Erin Swanson, Water.org