WEBVTT 00:00:01.809 --> 00:00:06.129 The idea of eliminating poverty is a great goal. 00:00:07.026 --> 00:00:09.806 I don't think anyone in this room would disagree. 00:00:10.512 --> 00:00:15.036 What worries me is when politicians with money 00:00:15.060 --> 00:00:17.681 and charismatic rock stars -- NOTE Paragraph 00:00:17.705 --> 00:00:19.285 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:00:19.309 --> 00:00:20.626 use the words, 00:00:20.650 --> 00:00:24.819 " ... it all just sounds so, so simple." NOTE Paragraph 00:00:27.073 --> 00:00:30.165 Now, I've got no bucket of money today 00:00:30.189 --> 00:00:33.380 and I've got no policy to release, 00:00:33.404 --> 00:00:35.643 and I certainly haven't got a guitar. 00:00:35.667 --> 00:00:37.527 I'll leave that to others. 00:00:38.440 --> 00:00:40.122 But I do have an idea, 00:00:40.146 --> 00:00:42.764 and that idea is called Housing for Health. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:43.344 --> 00:00:46.037 Housing for Health works with poor people. 00:00:46.061 --> 00:00:49.092 It works in the places where they live, 00:00:49.116 --> 00:00:52.218 and the work is done to improve their health. 00:00:53.049 --> 00:00:55.204 Over the last 28 years, 00:00:55.228 --> 00:00:58.656 this tough, grinding, dirty work 00:00:58.680 --> 00:01:03.141 has been done by literally thousands of people around Australia 00:01:03.165 --> 00:01:05.605 and, more recently, overseas, 00:01:05.629 --> 00:01:07.833 and their work has proven 00:01:07.857 --> 00:01:13.307 that focused design can improve even the poorest living environments. 00:01:13.331 --> 00:01:14.673 It can improve health 00:01:14.697 --> 00:01:19.462 and it can play a part in reducing, if not eliminating, poverty. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:21.256 --> 00:01:23.307 I'm going to start where the story began -- 00:01:23.331 --> 00:01:27.176 1985, in Central Australia. 00:01:27.200 --> 00:01:29.923 A man called Yami Lester, an Aboriginal man, 00:01:29.947 --> 00:01:31.785 was running a health service. 00:01:32.625 --> 00:01:36.575 Eighty percent of what walked in the door, in terms of illness, 00:01:36.599 --> 00:01:38.788 was infectious disease -- 00:01:38.812 --> 00:01:41.660 third world, developing world infectious disease, 00:01:41.684 --> 00:01:44.447 caused by a poor living environment. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:47.381 --> 00:01:50.953 Yami assembled a team in Alice Springs. 00:01:50.977 --> 00:01:53.442 He got a medical doctor. 00:01:53.466 --> 00:01:56.242 He got an environmental health guy. 00:01:56.266 --> 00:02:01.010 And he hand-selected a team of local Aboriginal people 00:02:01.034 --> 00:02:02.667 to work on this project. 00:02:03.540 --> 00:02:05.245 Yami told us at that first meeting, 00:02:05.269 --> 00:02:09.011 "There's no money," -- always a good start -- 00:02:09.035 --> 00:02:12.524 " ... no money, you have six months, 00:02:12.548 --> 00:02:15.562 and I want you to start on a project --" which, in his language, 00:02:15.586 --> 00:02:18.314 he called "Uwankara Palyanku Kanyintjaku," 00:02:18.338 --> 00:02:23.300 which, translated, is "a plan to stop people getting sick" -- 00:02:23.324 --> 00:02:24.737 a profound brief. 00:02:27.265 --> 00:02:28.827 That was our task. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:30.279 --> 00:02:34.300 First step, the medical doctor went away for about six months. 00:02:34.932 --> 00:02:39.363 And he worked on what were to become these nine health goals -- 00:02:39.387 --> 00:02:41.223 what were we aiming at? 00:02:43.236 --> 00:02:45.427 After six months of work, he came to my office 00:02:45.451 --> 00:02:50.022 and presented me with those nine words on a piece of paper. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:50.046 --> 00:02:54.042 [The 9 Healthy Living Practices: Washing, clothes, wastewater, nutrition, crowding, 00:02:54.066 --> 00:02:55.733 animals, dust, temperature, injury] NOTE Paragraph 00:02:55.757 --> 00:02:59.027 I was very unimpressed. Big ideas need big words, 00:02:59.051 --> 00:03:00.762 and preferably a lot of them. 00:03:01.450 --> 00:03:03.266 This didn't fit the bill. 00:03:03.290 --> 00:03:07.656 What I didn't see and what you can't see 00:03:07.680 --> 00:03:11.994 was that he'd assembled thousands of pages 00:03:12.018 --> 00:03:15.784 of local, national and international health research 00:03:15.808 --> 00:03:20.610 that filled out the picture as to why these were the health targets. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:20.634 --> 00:03:24.786 The pictures that came a bit later had a very simple reason. 00:03:24.810 --> 00:03:28.073 The Aboriginal people who were our bosses and the senior people 00:03:28.097 --> 00:03:30.439 were most commonly illiterate, 00:03:30.463 --> 00:03:32.622 so the story had to be told in pictures 00:03:32.646 --> 00:03:34.347 of what these goals were. 00:03:34.371 --> 00:03:36.673 We worked with the community, 00:03:36.697 --> 00:03:38.680 not telling them what was going to happen 00:03:38.704 --> 00:03:40.533 in a language they didn't understand. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:41.593 --> 00:03:44.836 So we had the goals and each one of these goals -- 00:03:44.860 --> 00:03:46.721 and I won't go through them all -- 00:03:46.745 --> 00:03:50.824 puts at the center the person and their health issue, 00:03:50.848 --> 00:03:52.800 and it then connects them 00:03:52.824 --> 00:03:57.309 to the bits of the physical environment that are actually needed 00:03:57.333 --> 00:03:58.865 to keep their health good. 00:03:59.262 --> 00:04:01.943 And the highest priority, you see on the screen, 00:04:01.967 --> 00:04:05.768 is washing people once a day, particularly children. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:06.310 --> 00:04:08.064 And I hope most of you are thinking, 00:04:08.088 --> 00:04:09.390 "What? That sounds simple." NOTE Paragraph 00:04:09.414 --> 00:04:13.470 Now, I'm going to ask you all a very personal question. 00:04:13.494 --> 00:04:14.875 This morning before you came, 00:04:14.899 --> 00:04:19.070 who could have had a wash using a shower? 00:04:20.198 --> 00:04:23.413 I'm not going to ask if you had a shower, because I'm too polite. 00:04:23.437 --> 00:04:24.588 That's it. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:24.612 --> 00:04:25.613 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:04:25.637 --> 00:04:27.399 All right, I think it's fair to say 00:04:27.423 --> 00:04:30.470 most people here could have had a shower this morning. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:30.494 --> 00:04:32.618 I'm going to ask you to do some more work. 00:04:32.642 --> 00:04:35.146 I want you all to select one of the houses 00:04:35.170 --> 00:04:37.222 of the 25 houses you see on the screen. 00:04:37.246 --> 00:04:40.652 I want you to select one of them and note the position of that house 00:04:40.676 --> 00:04:42.053 and keep that in your head. 00:04:42.077 --> 00:04:43.603 Have you all got a house? 00:04:43.627 --> 00:04:46.077 I'm going to ask you to live there for a few months, 00:04:46.101 --> 00:04:47.707 so make sure you've got it right. 00:04:47.731 --> 00:04:50.754 It's in the northwest of Western Australia, very pleasant place. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:50.778 --> 00:04:53.990 OK. Let's see if your shower in that house is working. 00:04:55.328 --> 00:04:58.463 I hear some "Aw!" and I hear some "Ah!" NOTE Paragraph 00:04:58.487 --> 00:05:01.267 If you get a green tick, your shower's working. 00:05:01.291 --> 00:05:02.577 You and your kids are fine. 00:05:02.601 --> 00:05:04.970 If you get a red cross, 00:05:04.994 --> 00:05:07.233 well, I've looked carefully around the room 00:05:07.257 --> 00:05:10.433 and it's not going to make much difference to this crew. 00:05:10.457 --> 00:05:12.981 Why? Because you're all too old. 00:05:13.005 --> 00:05:16.217 I know that's going to come as a shock to some of you, but you are. 00:05:16.241 --> 00:05:18.120 And before you get offended and leave, 00:05:18.144 --> 00:05:19.960 I've got to say that being too old, 00:05:19.984 --> 00:05:23.532 in this case, means that pretty much everyone in the room, I think, 00:05:23.556 --> 00:05:25.461 is over five years of age. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:27.465 --> 00:05:30.226 We're really concerned with kids naught to five. 00:05:30.250 --> 00:05:31.470 And why? 00:05:31.946 --> 00:05:36.747 Washing is the antidote to the sort of bugs, 00:05:36.771 --> 00:05:39.994 the common infectious diseases of the eyes, the ears, 00:05:40.018 --> 00:05:42.414 the chest and the skin 00:05:42.438 --> 00:05:45.310 that, if they occur in the first five years of life, 00:05:45.334 --> 00:05:48.737 permanently damage those organs. 00:05:49.515 --> 00:05:52.194 They leave a lifelong remnant. 00:05:53.123 --> 00:05:55.225 That means that by the age of five, 00:05:55.249 --> 00:05:57.535 you can't see as well for the rest of your life. 00:05:57.559 --> 00:06:00.049 You can't hear as well for the rest of your life. 00:06:00.073 --> 00:06:01.415 You can't breathe as well. 00:06:01.439 --> 00:06:04.929 You've lost a third of your lung capacity by the age of five. 00:06:04.953 --> 00:06:06.796 And even skin infection, 00:06:06.820 --> 00:06:10.376 which we originally thought wasn't that big a problem, 00:06:10.400 --> 00:06:12.625 mild skin infections naught to five give you 00:06:12.649 --> 00:06:15.105 a greatly increased chance of renal failure, 00:06:15.129 --> 00:06:17.673 needing dialysis at age 40. 00:06:18.364 --> 00:06:21.259 This is a big deal, so the ticks and crosses on the screen 00:06:21.283 --> 00:06:24.147 are actually critical for young kids. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:24.697 --> 00:06:27.806 Those ticks and crosses represent the 7,800 houses 00:06:27.830 --> 00:06:29.894 we've looked at nationally around Australia, 00:06:29.918 --> 00:06:31.327 the same proportion. 00:06:31.351 --> 00:06:32.806 What you see on the screen -- 00:06:32.830 --> 00:06:36.063 35 percent of those not-so-famous houses 00:06:36.087 --> 00:06:38.963 lived in by 50,000 indigenous people -- 00:06:38.987 --> 00:06:41.548 35 percent had a working shower. 00:06:42.167 --> 00:06:47.937 Ten percent of those same 7,800 houses had safe electrical systems. 00:06:48.520 --> 00:06:53.610 And 58 percent of those houses had a working toilet. 00:06:55.691 --> 00:06:58.433 These are by a simple, standard test. 00:06:58.457 --> 00:07:00.858 In the case of the shower: 00:07:00.882 --> 00:07:05.390 does it have hot and cold water, two taps that work, 00:07:05.414 --> 00:07:10.163 a shower rose to get water onto your head or onto your body, 00:07:10.187 --> 00:07:12.021 and a drain that takes the water away? 00:07:12.045 --> 00:07:16.093 Not well-designed, not beautiful, not elegant -- 00:07:16.117 --> 00:07:17.284 just that they function. 00:07:17.308 --> 00:07:19.531 And the same tests for the electrical system 00:07:19.555 --> 00:07:20.886 and the toilets. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:21.811 --> 00:07:24.743 Housing for Health projects aren't about measuring failure -- 00:07:24.767 --> 00:07:27.065 they're actually about improving houses. 00:07:27.475 --> 00:07:31.369 We start on day one of every project. 00:07:31.393 --> 00:07:34.632 We've learned -- we don't make promises, we don't do reports. 00:07:34.656 --> 00:07:39.978 We arrive in the morning with tools, tons of equipment, trades, 00:07:40.002 --> 00:07:43.486 and we train up a local team on the first day to start work. 00:07:43.510 --> 00:07:45.290 By the evening of the first day, 00:07:45.314 --> 00:07:49.725 a few houses in that community are better than when we started in the morning. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:49.749 --> 00:07:52.004 That work continues for six to 12 months, 00:07:52.028 --> 00:07:53.726 until all the houses are improved 00:07:53.750 --> 00:07:58.351 and we've spent our budget of 7,500 dollars total per house. 00:07:58.375 --> 00:07:59.879 That's our average budget. 00:08:00.451 --> 00:08:04.747 At the end of six months to a year, we test every house again. 00:08:04.771 --> 00:08:06.832 It's very easy to spend money. 00:08:06.856 --> 00:08:09.174 It's very difficult to improve 00:08:09.198 --> 00:08:11.603 the function of all those parts of the house. 00:08:11.627 --> 00:08:14.623 And for a whole house, the nine healthy living practices, 00:08:14.647 --> 00:08:18.308 we test, check and fix 250 items in every house. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:19.161 --> 00:08:23.251 And these are the results we can get with our 7,500 dollars. 00:08:23.275 --> 00:08:25.877 We can get showers up to 86 percent working, 00:08:25.901 --> 00:08:29.692 we can get electrical systems up to 77 percent working 00:08:29.716 --> 00:08:32.349 and we can get 90 percent of toilets working 00:08:32.373 --> 00:08:34.532 in those 7,500 houses. 00:08:35.226 --> 00:08:36.407 (Applause) NOTE Paragraph 00:08:36.431 --> 00:08:37.679 Thank you. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:37.703 --> 00:08:43.997 (Applause) NOTE Paragraph 00:08:44.021 --> 00:08:46.996 The teams do a great job, and that's their work. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:48.816 --> 00:08:50.932 I think there's an obvious question 00:08:50.956 --> 00:08:52.806 that I hope you're thinking about. 00:08:53.593 --> 00:08:55.545 Why do we have to do this work? 00:08:56.059 --> 00:08:58.699 Why are the houses in such poor condition? 00:08:59.271 --> 00:09:02.808 Seventy percent of the work we do is due to lack of routine maintenance -- 00:09:02.832 --> 00:09:05.237 the sort of things that happen in all our houses. 00:09:05.261 --> 00:09:09.144 Things wear out, should have been done by state government or local government, 00:09:09.168 --> 00:09:12.354 simply not done, the house doesn't work. 00:09:12.378 --> 00:09:16.269 Twenty-one percent of the things we fix are due to faulty construction -- 00:09:16.293 --> 00:09:19.294 literally things that are built upside down and back to front. 00:09:19.318 --> 00:09:21.167 They don't work, we have to fix them. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:22.081 --> 00:09:27.681 And if you've lived in Australia in the last 30 years, the final cause -- 00:09:27.705 --> 00:09:31.360 you will have heard always that indigenous people trash houses. 00:09:31.384 --> 00:09:34.822 It's one of the almost rock-solid pieces of evidence 00:09:34.846 --> 00:09:36.861 which I've never seen evidence for, 00:09:36.885 --> 00:09:40.345 that's always reeled out as "That's the problem with indigenous housing." 00:09:40.369 --> 00:09:42.539 Well, nine percent of what we spend is damage, 00:09:42.563 --> 00:09:44.234 misuse or abuse of any sort. 00:09:46.120 --> 00:09:49.165 We argue strongly that the people living in the house 00:09:49.189 --> 00:09:50.820 are simply not the problem. 00:09:51.384 --> 00:09:53.182 And we'll go a lot further than that; 00:09:53.206 --> 00:09:57.019 the people living in the house are actually a major part of the solution. 00:09:57.749 --> 00:10:01.114 Seventy-five percent of our national team in Australia -- 00:10:01.138 --> 00:10:03.591 over 75 at the minute -- 00:10:03.615 --> 00:10:07.943 are actually local, indigenous people from the communities we work in. 00:10:07.967 --> 00:10:09.721 They do all aspects of the work. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:10.192 --> 00:10:15.929 (Applause) NOTE Paragraph 00:10:15.953 --> 00:10:19.811 In 2010, for example, there were 831, 00:10:19.835 --> 00:10:22.408 all over Australia, and the Torres Strait Islands, 00:10:22.432 --> 00:10:26.891 all states, working to improve the houses where they and their families live, 00:10:26.915 --> 00:10:29.174 and that's an important thing. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:29.198 --> 00:10:32.308 Our work's always had a focus on health. 00:10:32.332 --> 00:10:33.498 That's the key. 00:10:34.434 --> 00:10:37.894 The developing world bug, trachoma, causes blindness. 00:10:37.918 --> 00:10:40.284 It's a developing-world illness, 00:10:40.308 --> 00:10:42.137 and yet, the picture you see behind 00:10:42.161 --> 00:10:45.957 is in an Aboriginal community in the late 1990s, 00:10:45.981 --> 00:10:49.981 where 95 percent of school-aged kids had active trachoma 00:10:50.005 --> 00:10:51.960 in their eyes, doing damage. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:53.142 --> 00:10:54.418 OK, what do we do? 00:10:54.442 --> 00:10:57.745 Well, first thing we do, we get showers working. 00:10:57.769 --> 00:10:59.610 Why? Because that flushes the bug out. 00:10:59.634 --> 00:11:01.975 We put washing facilities in the school as well, 00:11:01.999 --> 00:11:04.736 so kids can wash their faces many times during the day. 00:11:04.760 --> 00:11:06.649 We wash the bug out. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:06.673 --> 00:11:10.514 Second, the eye doctors tell us that dust scours the eye 00:11:10.538 --> 00:11:11.855 and lets the bug in quick. 00:11:11.879 --> 00:11:13.088 So what do we do? 00:11:13.112 --> 00:11:16.612 We call up the doctor of dust, and there is such a person. 00:11:16.636 --> 00:11:18.562 He was loaned to us by a mining company. 00:11:18.586 --> 00:11:21.256 He controls dust on mining company sites. 00:11:21.280 --> 00:11:23.083 And he came out and, within a day, 00:11:23.107 --> 00:11:25.298 it worked out that most dust in this community 00:11:25.322 --> 00:11:28.572 was within a meter of the ground, the wind-driven dust -- 00:11:28.596 --> 00:11:31.477 so he suggested making mounds to catch the dust 00:11:31.501 --> 00:11:35.223 before it went into the house area and affected the eyes of kids. 00:11:35.247 --> 00:11:38.790 So we used dirt to stop dust. 00:11:38.814 --> 00:11:41.582 We did it. He provided us dust monitors. 00:11:41.606 --> 00:11:44.062 We tested and we reduced the dust. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:44.086 --> 00:11:46.287 Then we wanted to get rid of the bug generally. 00:11:46.311 --> 00:11:47.461 So how do we do that? 00:11:47.485 --> 00:11:52.219 Well, we call up the doctor of flies -- and, yes, there is a doctor of flies. 00:11:52.728 --> 00:11:54.282 As our Aboriginal mate said, 00:11:54.306 --> 00:11:56.417 "You white fellows ought to get out more." NOTE Paragraph 00:11:56.441 --> 00:11:58.671 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:11:58.695 --> 00:12:01.800 And the doctor of flies very quickly determined 00:12:01.824 --> 00:12:05.902 that there was one fly that carried the bug. 00:12:05.926 --> 00:12:08.349 He could give school kids in this community 00:12:08.373 --> 00:12:11.551 the beautiful fly trap you see above in the slide. 00:12:11.575 --> 00:12:14.111 They could trap the flies, send them to him in Perth. 00:12:14.635 --> 00:12:16.088 When the bug was in the gut, 00:12:16.112 --> 00:12:19.079 he'd send back by return post some dung beetles. 00:12:19.103 --> 00:12:21.396 The dung beetles ate the camel dung, 00:12:21.420 --> 00:12:23.166 the flies died through lack of food, 00:12:23.190 --> 00:12:24.499 and trachoma dropped. 00:12:24.523 --> 00:12:30.336 And over the year, trachoma dropped radically in this place, and stayed low. 00:12:30.360 --> 00:12:33.802 We changed the environment, not just treated the eyes. 00:12:35.079 --> 00:12:37.524 And finally, you get a good eye. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:38.810 --> 00:12:40.705 All these small health gains 00:12:40.729 --> 00:12:43.951 and small pieces of the puzzle make a big difference. 00:12:43.975 --> 00:12:45.958 The New South Wales Department of Health, 00:12:45.982 --> 00:12:47.259 that radical organization, 00:12:47.283 --> 00:12:50.823 did an independent trial over three years 00:12:50.847 --> 00:12:53.420 to look at 10 years of the work we've been doing 00:12:53.444 --> 00:12:55.912 in these sorts of projects in New South Wales. 00:12:55.936 --> 00:13:01.480 And they found a 40 percent reduction in hospital admissions 00:13:01.504 --> 00:13:05.234 for the illnesses that you could attribute to the poor environment -- 00:13:05.258 --> 00:13:07.628 a 40 percent reduction. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:07.652 --> 00:13:14.616 (Applause) NOTE Paragraph 00:13:15.845 --> 00:13:18.567 Just to show that the principles we've used in Australia 00:13:18.591 --> 00:13:19.929 can be used in other places, 00:13:19.953 --> 00:13:22.691 I'm just going to go to one other place, and that's Nepal. 00:13:22.715 --> 00:13:24.326 And what a beautiful place to go. 00:13:24.350 --> 00:13:27.711 We were asked by a small village of 600 people 00:13:27.735 --> 00:13:31.740 to go in and make toilets where none existed. 00:13:31.764 --> 00:13:32.975 Health was poor. 00:13:34.270 --> 00:13:35.739 We went in with no grand plan, 00:13:35.763 --> 00:13:37.890 no grand promises of a great program, 00:13:37.914 --> 00:13:41.122 just the offer to build two toilets for two families. 00:13:41.146 --> 00:13:44.494 It was during the design of the first toilet 00:13:44.518 --> 00:13:45.777 that I went for lunch, 00:13:45.801 --> 00:13:48.850 invited by the family into their main room of the house. 00:13:48.874 --> 00:13:50.874 It was choking with smoke. 00:13:50.898 --> 00:13:54.473 People were cooking on their only fuel source, green timber. 00:13:54.497 --> 00:13:56.594 The smoke coming off that timber is choking, 00:13:56.618 --> 00:13:59.318 and in an enclosed house, you simply can't breathe. 00:14:00.048 --> 00:14:03.938 Later we found the leading cause of illness and death 00:14:03.962 --> 00:14:07.517 in this particular region is through respiratory failure. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:07.541 --> 00:14:09.665 So all of a sudden, we had two problems. 00:14:09.689 --> 00:14:11.753 We were there originally to look at toilets 00:14:11.777 --> 00:14:14.075 and get human waste off the ground, that's fine. 00:14:14.099 --> 00:14:17.013 But all of a sudden now there was a second problem: 00:14:17.037 --> 00:14:18.862 How do we actually get the smoke down? 00:14:18.886 --> 00:14:22.922 So two problems, and design should be about more than one thing. 00:14:22.946 --> 00:14:26.516 Solution: Take human waste, take animal waste, 00:14:26.540 --> 00:14:29.898 put it into a chamber, out of that, extract biogas, 00:14:29.922 --> 00:14:31.561 methane gas. 00:14:31.585 --> 00:14:34.986 The gas gives three to four hours cooking a day -- 00:14:35.010 --> 00:14:38.650 clean, smokeless and free for the family. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:38.674 --> 00:14:43.818 (Applause) NOTE Paragraph 00:14:43.842 --> 00:14:46.726 I put it to you: is this eliminating poverty? 00:14:46.750 --> 00:14:51.162 And the answer from the Nepali team who's working at the minute would say, 00:14:51.186 --> 00:14:52.337 don't be ridiculous -- 00:14:52.361 --> 00:14:54.433 we have three million more toilets to build 00:14:54.457 --> 00:14:57.308 before we can even make a stab at that claim. 00:14:57.332 --> 00:15:00.291 And I don't pretend anything else. NOTE Paragraph 00:15:00.315 --> 00:15:02.973 But as we all sit here today, 00:15:02.997 --> 00:15:04.833 there are now over 100 toilets built 00:15:04.857 --> 00:15:07.270 in this village and a couple nearby. 00:15:07.294 --> 00:15:10.743 Well over 1,000 people use those toilets. 00:15:10.767 --> 00:15:13.942 Yami Lama, he's a young boy. 00:15:13.966 --> 00:15:18.270 He's got significantly less gut infection because he's now got toilets, 00:15:18.294 --> 00:15:20.654 and there isn't human waste on the ground. 00:15:22.040 --> 00:15:25.357 Kanji Maya, she's a mother, and a proud one. 00:15:25.381 --> 00:15:29.824 She's probably right now cooking lunch for her family 00:15:29.848 --> 00:15:32.293 on biogas, smokeless fuel. 00:15:32.317 --> 00:15:33.563 Her lungs have got better, 00:15:33.587 --> 00:15:35.563 and they'll get better as time increases, 00:15:35.587 --> 00:15:37.768 because she's not cooking in the same smoke. 00:15:37.792 --> 00:15:40.394 Surya takes the waste out of the biogas chamber 00:15:40.418 --> 00:15:43.335 when it's shed the gas, he puts it on his crops. 00:15:43.359 --> 00:15:46.057 He's trebled his crop income, 00:15:46.081 --> 00:15:48.996 more food for the family and more money for the family. 00:15:49.020 --> 00:15:53.774 And finally Bishnu, the leader of the team, 00:15:53.798 --> 00:15:56.961 has now understood that not only have we built toilets, 00:15:56.985 --> 00:15:59.137 we've also built a team, 00:15:59.161 --> 00:16:01.793 and that team is now working in two villages 00:16:01.817 --> 00:16:04.290 where they're training up the next two villages 00:16:04.314 --> 00:16:06.144 to keep the work expanding. 00:16:06.168 --> 00:16:07.793 And that, to me, is the key. NOTE Paragraph 00:16:07.817 --> 00:16:12.484 (Applause) NOTE Paragraph 00:16:12.508 --> 00:16:15.212 People are not the problem. 00:16:16.609 --> 00:16:18.196 We've never found that. 00:16:18.220 --> 00:16:20.915 The problem: poor living environment, 00:16:20.939 --> 00:16:23.907 poor housing and the bugs that do people harm. 00:16:25.137 --> 00:16:30.876 None of those are limited by geography, by skin color or by religion. 00:16:30.900 --> 00:16:32.278 None of them. 00:16:33.087 --> 00:16:35.540 The common link between all the work we've had to do 00:16:35.564 --> 00:16:37.435 is one thing, and that's poverty. NOTE Paragraph 00:16:39.410 --> 00:16:43.187 Nelson Mandela said, in the mid-2000s, not too far from here, 00:16:43.211 --> 00:16:49.492 he said that like slavery and apartheid, "Poverty is not natural. 00:16:49.516 --> 00:16:53.375 It is man-made and can be overcome and eradicated 00:16:53.399 --> 00:16:55.523 by the actions of human beings." 00:16:56.864 --> 00:16:58.173 I want to end by saying 00:16:58.197 --> 00:17:04.354 it's been the actions of thousands of ordinary human beings 00:17:04.378 --> 00:17:07.603 doing -- I think -- extraordinary work, 00:17:07.627 --> 00:17:10.271 that have actually improved health, 00:17:10.295 --> 00:17:13.416 and, maybe only in a small way, reduced poverty. NOTE Paragraph 00:17:13.440 --> 00:17:15.112 Thank you very much for your time. NOTE Paragraph 00:17:15.136 --> 00:17:21.841 (Applause)