\n Blessing Fasina, 29, moved to the UK from Nigeria in 2023 to study his masters, but quickly observed a shortage of public facilities.\n<\/p>\n
\n In January, he launched Where to Wee, which maps where toilets are located, whether they\u2019re open, and their condition.\n<\/p>\n
\n Blessing said: \u201cWhen I got to the UK and went out, I couldn\u2019t find a toilet.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cThis was surprising as you don\u2019t expect this in a first world country\u2014 but when you look at it there are a shortage of public toilets.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cThere are several challenges you expect to encounter when you move abroad; it may be difficult to get a job, difficult to blend in with the culture\u2014 you never think it will be a problem to access public facilities.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n Blessing, who also works in the NHS, put his app development background to good use by creating Where to Wee, which already has more than 3,000 users and 75,000 impressions on the web.\n<\/p>\n
\n As well as displaying your nearest facilities, the app allows users to report toilets that have shut\u2014 equivalent to the live updates motorists receive on Waze.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cPeople are really frustrated at how difficult it is to access public toilets\u2014 especially for older people, young families, and pregnant women,\u201d Blessing added.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cPeople have even told me they are not going out due to the fear of not having an accessible toilet to use.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n The app covers locations across the UK, including Bournemouth, where several toilets have closed in recent weeks.\n<\/p>\n
\n In April, the disabled toilet in Lower Gardens was closed<\/a>, meanwhile in the past few days vandalism put the loos at Baiter Park and Dolphin Quay out of order<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n \n Blessing hopes to work with councils in the future to make information more accessible.\n<\/p>\n \n \u201cA lot of the information is out there already, but it may be hard to find or not up to date,\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n \n \u201cI would propose we collaborate with councils to get accurate data, and my objective is this partnership would improve access to public toilets.\u201d\n<\/p>\n \n Blessing has made the app free, to \u201cgive back\u201d to the country he moved to three years ago.\n<\/p>\n \n \u201cI\u2019ve had people asking: am I going to have pay for this app?\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n \n \u201cBut I said no\u2014 since coming to the UK in 2023, this country has given me lots of opportunities and different experiences.\n<\/p>\n \n \u201cThe app is completely free with no adverts\u2014 it\u2019s my way of giving back to the community and the country.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Blessing Fasina, 29, moved to the UK from Nigeria in 2023 to study his masters, but quickly observed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":579483,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[2306,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-579482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mobile","tag-mobile","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=579482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579482\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/579483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=579482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=579482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=579482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}