Social Media

How Poop & Social Media Can Raise Awareness for Charity


On March 13 you — our dear reader — will have a chance to poop on your friends. For charity. As strange as it may sound, "World Poopin' Day" is a pretty smart way of mixing social media with under-served water sanitation issues.

"Poopin" can refer to one of two things. In net-speak, it is the term used for sending messages through a friend's Twitter or Facebook account when they've left their cell phone unattended. There is even a list of rules associated with poopin, like "2. Stealth is rewarded" or "6. Accept defeat with grace and dignity." The anatomical definition of pooping is, well, yeah.

That discomfort with talking about poop is actually core to World Poopin Day, an awareness campaign benefitting and GiveLove to drive awareness to water sanitation issues, especially in developing countries. It is sponsored by CoTweet, Giveo and mGive. Water sanitation issues are often only associated with clean drinking water, but according to, the majority of illness in the world is caused by fecal matter and lack of sanitation. "Sanitation is not the kind of topic you're just going to start talking about. There are cultural norms about decency, privacy, and shame that go with talking about poop and pee. It's much easier to watch videos of kittens," claims the World Poopin Day website.

poopin day image

"We want to take away the stigma around poop," said Cybele Diamandopoulos, a spokesperson for the campaign. "It's silly. Everyone does it. There's even that book for kids, Everyone Poops. We want to just get people to talk about it." To spark that conversation, users can sign up at using their Facebook or Twitter account. Their accounts will be randomly poopin'd at some point on March 13 from a selection of five messages expressing support for water sanitation issues. The posts will share the hashtag #poopin along with information highlighting the issues and a call to donate. You can also text "poopin" to 27722 to make a $10 donation.

poopin messages imageNeedless to say, this is a kinder version of poopin than what you could expect from a friend who decided to hijack your account. Mass humiliation has instead been replaced with support for a good cause and a touch of humor.

"Yeah, poop is funny, but it's not funny," Diamandopoulos said. "Humor is definitely key, but we don't want to lose sight of what we're doing." The stats are a little shocking. According to, more people on the planet have a cellphone than have a toilet. The water in American toilets is cleaner than nearly 1 billion people have to drink. Each year, diarrhea kills more young children than AIDS, malaria and measles combined. To put that in perspective, the world loses 70,000 classrooms of kindergartners every year due to diarrhea.

The campaign, started just in mid-January, is currently running on a team of about 10 people, said Diamandopoulos. They understand that change won't happen in the span of one day. To help, registered users will be able to opt-in to get updates from and GiveLove throughout the year. The goal is to start building a community around sanitation issues and expand the program next year to include larger partners and corporations that could help with matching donations and awareness. Perhaps a silly meme can really make a difference across the world.

What do you make of adding humor to a social good campaign? Is this a good way of bring attention to an unsavory topic? Are you going to be poopin? Let us know in the comments below.

Image courtesy of Flickr, ssalonso

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