My new friend, Marcia Bernbaum, Mentor and Advisor to the People for Fairness Coalition (PFFC) in Washington, D.C., rang me up.
“Where is it?” she asked.
“Where’s what?”  I replied.
“You know. The list.”
“The list?” I started to get concerned.
“THE LIST the ARA published in 2015 that catalogs the long, long rolls of the restroom challenged. It’s been a great resource for us. It has really helped us make our case for more public restrooms in our nation’s capital.” The list was an essential part of the documentation they used for their PFFC Downtown DC Public Restroom Initiative – arguably one of the most active and hopeful grassroots-to-policy campaigns in the US in support of public restrooms.
“Hmm, I’ll get back to you.”  I replied, in full “new guy” mode. (Ok, I’ve been executive director for a year now, time to drop that excuse, but I digress.)
I started digging.
It was there. But, because the American Restroom Association has compiled such an unbelievable library of resource materials in our quest for clean, safe, well-designed public restrooms, well, let’s just say, it was “buried in the virtual stacks.” Marcy convinced me that it needs to be front and center. You’ll find it now in our main menu under “Who Are the Restroom Challenged?.” A few examples:

• Pregnant women
• Parents touring with young children
• Otherwise healthy persons suffering bowel incontinence
• Those suffering Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Ulcerative Colitis
• The Elderly (Functional capacity is halved as we age)
• Men suffering an enlarged prostate

And that’s just to start. Let’s put names, faces, and experiences to those categories. Submit your tale on our Contact the ARA page and we’ll leverage your real world example into action. Help us help you!

• Tim Pyle, Executive Director – March 22, 2021