Bara Wahbeh - Building Toilets for Refugee Camps and the 'Global South' (Akyas Sanitation)

Around 800 million people worldwide don't have access to a toilet. That means over 800 million people - everyday - are defecating wherever they can: behind a bush, on the side of a road, in a hole, or walking what could be miles and miles just to find the nearest toilet. The problem gets worse (much worse) in densely populated areas, such as refugee camps and settlements. With thousands of people living in extreme proximity to one another, it becomes incredibly challenging to properly contain human waste without toilets or proper sanitation infrastructure. As such, people go to the bathroom in what are called pit latrines: effectively holes in the ground. But without an organized system to contain and remove the waste from densely populated camps, feces eventually rises to the surface, dangerously infecting the camp in a viciously devastating cycle. After seeing the conditions at several Syrian refugee camps throughout Turkey with his own eyes, Bara Wahbeh, a Palestinian-Jordanian engineer and entrepreneur, founded Akays Sanitation in 2018 to create a revolutionary toilet that would allow those living in settlements and those impoverished in the Global South to go to the bathroom - finally - in a dignified and sanitary way. Warning: this episode does include explicit language and describes - in detail - the harsh conditions in which many in refugee camps throughout Turkey, Jordan, and Yemen live.

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Launching a dating app in Vietnam. Scaling a farm-tech business in Pakistan. Building a one-of-a-kind, no-water toilet for refugee camps throughout Jordan. Founders from emerging and frontier markets face unique challenges when starting and scaling their businesses. These are their stories. New episodes every other week.