We want to ensure that vulnerable people have sustainable access to clean, drinkable water. This is important because using dirty or contaminated water can cause a range of preventable illnesses, some of them fatal; others just leading to blindness and making self-sufficiency very difficult. It might seem like a pipe dream, but this goal is absolutely possible to achieve.
How it works
The Safe Water Enterprise provides potable water for an entire village, using membrane filters that work independently of the external power supply and process between 500 and 1,000 litres of drinking water per hour. Pre-fabricated kiosk modules assure building quality and can be flexibly deployed. To prevent water from being re-contaminated, new water containers are sold at the water kiosks or the community can bring their own containers to the kiosk and have them sanitised onsite prior to being filled with safe clean water.
These not only improve health conditions in the local community; flow on effects mean that healthy children can consistently attend school, and that healthy parents can work and maintain household income.
Our model works
Water kiosks are a common sight in many African towns. People travel to the kiosk, pay to fill up containers with water, and take it home. However, many of these kiosks are providing water that hasn’t been treated – and hence is unsafe for drinking. Our Safe Water Kiosks are pre-fabricated units that can be installed quickly. They use no electricity, ensuring that the cost of running the units is kept as low as possible. So far, we’ve installed almost 20+ Safe Water Kiosks around Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania.
The water stations foster entrepreneurship and create new opportunities for generating income. The filtered drinking water is sold at an affordable price, and the earnings are reinvested in maintaining and expanding the project. Station managers receive the required technical and entrepreneurial training. The medium-term goal is for ownership of the stations to be passed on to local communities and entrepreneurs.
The next step – make it bigger!
But this dream can be made a reality in more than small-scale local settings. We want to ensure that every community in the world has access to cheap, safe drinking water. To achieve that, we need two things:
- Agencies which are already working in communities that need our units.
- Corporate sponsors who will fund the building of Safe Water Kiosks around the world.
Can you help?
See our Support Us page for information on how you can personally assist a community to receive clean drinking water. However, donations aren’t the only way to help us out – you could also suggest that your workplace become a corporate sponsor for a single Safe Water Kiosk.
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