Food for Thought from the World Number Two Man
Mr. Jack Sim, aka Mr. Toilet, is hosted at Worcester College to speak to the WHT scholars and other interested scholars about "How to create a massive transformative global movement”
During Michaelmas term, we were delighted by Mr. Jack Sim’s visit to Oxford. He is the founder of the World Toilet Organization (WTO) and the creator of World Toilet Day which is held annually on the 19th of November. Jack is globally known as Mr. Toilet. On behalf of the “Water Scholars of WHT”, we were thrilled to organize an event at our Worcester College to talk and learn from him; The Oxford Water Network co-hosted the event.
In a funny and inspiring conversation Jack shared with us how he started the World Toilet Organization - a result of him seeking his purpose in life, to eradicate open defecation and poor sanitation systems. His idea grew from the thought of a 40-year-old to a globally recognized and respected social enterprise. Here are some of the lessons Mr. Toilet shared with us that were responsible for his success.
Be humble
One of the inspiring thoughts he shared is, we should not seek to find credit when we start a project – especially a successful one. This is a real challenge to the selfishness of our souls; we often need credit to satisfy our ego. He fought against these needs by keeping his eye on the big picture – benefiting other people and seeing your idea work and other people join with their different perspectives yet united in the same goal.
Use humour: “If people laugh at you, they’re listening to you”
Every other minute a burst of laughter would emerge from the Worcester College auditorium. Mr Toilet’s presentation was filled with funny thoughts, jokes and anecdotes or images of old campaigns that showed Jack Sim in a costume, doing ridiculous things to highlight pressing, and many times, taboo issues. “If people laugh at you, they’re listening to you” he said, making it clear that the goal of catalysing action and awareness, is more important than personal considerations.
Collaborate: “If you try to do everything yourself, you become a bottleneck”
The WTO has 2 employees. They realized early on that they weren’t going to be able to do everything themselves, so they relied on collaboration. Taking lessons from Tom Sawyer’s infamous “Painting the Fence”, Mr. Toilet convinced people, countries, and organizations to do the work that needed to be done in exchange for the right to host the next WTO summit, to be associated with a good cause, or just making new connections that allowed the work to be feasible. “Mutual exploitation is collaboration”, don’t be afraid to ask for help and to do things in return.
It was a privilege to have Mr. Jack Sim talked to us about his path and it left us thinking about how we can use the available tools to build a path for solving the issues we are passionate about. How to attract attention? How to build alliances? How to create a narrative that stimulates cooperation and action? Whilst we place ourselves to the side so social goal can be achieved.
Food for thought.
