Our Mission
We are shit disrupters. Literally. We are on an audacious mission to achieve universal sanitation so 40% of us, particularly women and girls, have a better shot at staying healthy, being productive, getting educated....and surviving.
Our Story
Sankoya is a for-profit social enterprise. We are engineers, designers, researchers and change makers who share a common vision to make the world a lot less shitty. We are committed to reinvesting at least 51% of our profits to further our mission.
The Toronto Toilet, our affectionate moniker, is the brain child of Dr. Yu-Ling Cheng. As Director of University of Toronto's Centre for Global Engineering, Dr. Cheng has long been fascinated by how modern engineering can be applied to solve some of the world's greatest problems.
Invited to participate in Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Reinvent the Toilet Challenge, Dr. Cheng and her team realized early success when they were one of the top finalists for their freshman effort. And for the next 7 years (and counting), the Gates Foundation continues to support the team as they have made significant strides in refining the Toronto Toilet.
“Yu-Ling Cheng might not be a household name, but her invention could end up in households around the world.
It’s a toilet that the passionate professor has described as magical.”
The Road Ahead
Our toilet works in the lab and have completed two successful field tests in Coimbatore India. We continue to forge forward with more testing, tweaking and scaling. The journey is long and sometimes windy. But there is a light at the end of the tunnel and we are thrilled that the Toronto Toilet will have a role in:
Improving a child's odds of survival and staying healthy
Keeping girls safe and in school
Providing the most basic needs to the world's most underserved populations
Restoring dignity