Club Meeting - Guest Speaker - Mark Balla - Toilet Warrior

Online Club Meeting via Zoom

Topic & Speaker: Mark Balla - Toilet Warrior

Mark Balla approached the Rotary Club of Box Hill Central in District 9810 to introduce them to an issue that he thought they might be interested in. In the years since then, Mark has delivered a TEDx talk, spoken at district conferences in Australia, India and the USA. He has attended three Rotary International Conventions and was a speaker at the WASRAG World Water Summit in Sao Paulo in 2015, again in Toronto in 2018 and at the Rotary Presidential Summit on WASH and Literacy in Schools in Kolkata in 2016. He has also spoken at the RYLA camp in Victoria for the past three years.

At the RI Convention in Seoul in 2016 he was elected to the board of WASRAG (Water & Sanitation Rotarian Action Group). He is a Global WASRAG Ambassador and member of the Rotary Foundation Cadre of Technical Experts. The project he brought to his club has been explosively successful. The first project in 2015 reached 500 children in need. Subsequent projects have reached another 30,000 to 40,000 children and all signs are that by the end of 2019 the number will be approaching 200,000. He and other members of his club have spoken about their projects at over 50 Rotary Clubs in Australia, India, New Zealand and the USA.

Since graduating from university in 1987 with a degree in Linguistics, Mark's career has not followed a particularly obvious path - writer for Lonely Planet Publications, sales and marketing expert for the Commercial Shipbuilding Industry in Australia, New Zealand and South East Asia, CD and DVD manufacturer and Social Entrepreneur. Mark is currently writing a book, the working title of which is "A Journey to the Toilet". This and his position on the board of WASRAG should give you a clue as to what Mark is going to talk about when he visits our club.