UWON! A Unified Micro-franchise Water Organization Network
We propose to create a unified micro-franchise network shared by all water/health/sanitation organizations worldwide to collaboratively reach the UN Development Goals.
About You
Location
Project Street Address
Project City
Project Province/State
Project Postal/Zip Code
Project Country
Your idea
Field of Work
Water
Year the initative began (yyyy)
2004
Web site (url)
Positioning of your initiative on the mosaic diagram:
Which of these barriers is the primary focus of your work?
Limited focus on long-term impact
Which of the principles is the primary focus of your work?
Increase accountability through design for the long-term
If you believe some other barrier or principle should be included in the mosaic, please describe it and how it would affect the positioning of your initiative in the mosaic
This field has not been completed
Name Your Project
UWON! A Unified Micro-franchise Water Organization Network
Describe Your Idea
We propose to create a unified micro-franchise network shared by all water/health/sanitation organizations worldwide to collaboratively reach the UN Development Goals.
Innovation
What is your signature innovation, your new idea, in one sentence?
We propose to create a unified micro-franchise network shared by all water/health/sanitation organizations worldwide to collaboratively reach the UN Development Goals.
Describe your innovation. What makes your idea unique and different than others doing work in the field?
The World Bank-funded UV Bucket project is one among many technological/educational effort to improve water and health in developing countries. Its two-year monitoring led us to identify typical successes and failures of water and health projects in developing countries. The failures are associated with: inappropriate designs, lack of monitoring, poor maintenance, but above all, preferred technological solutions forced by NGOs onto the population instead of allowing for self-determination. The successes are often associated with an “internal agent of change” (self-help group, women group, rural school teacher) who receives training and, over time, empowers the rest of the community to make informed decisions.
Based on these lessons and inspired by the Scojo Foundation, we propose a unified micro-franchise network to distribute technologies and conduct integral water and health projects in all rural communities of the developing world. The network would be shared by all interested organizations worldwide and a common methodology for implementing projects would be adopted. The micro-franchise person would be the internal agent of change.
Delivery Model: How do you implement your innovation and apply it to the challenge/problem you are addressing?
In each community, a micro-franchise person (MIP) is selected by the community itself. The MIP is trained to facilitate integral water and health projects.
The community-participative integral project methodology (COPIM) would include:
Diagnosis (water, health, sanitation)
Solution identification: educational campaigns, technological trials, lobbying authorities, community actions (clean local springs…)
Monitoring and epidemiology
Evaluation, restart from diagnosis
The MCP uses a catalog of technologies (CATE) and earns 20% of sales, 30% goes to technology owner and 30% to NGO training MIP and supervising COPIM, 20% to network expansion.
How do you plan to expand your innovation?
1. Organize a key meeting on the creation of UWON network with: UV Bucket Project, Ashoka Foundation, Global Water Challenge, World Bank Development Marketplace, WHO, UN MDG, SCOJO Foundation, Grameen Bank and key NGOs in the field (PUR, Silver Ceramic Systems, Potters-for-Peace, SODIS, PSI, People and Water, Blue Planet Run Foundation, among others)
2. Develop a Wikipedia-type database of existing water and health technologies/techniques for developing countries (consulted by MIP on internet or printed).
3. Organize a World Summit for UWON’s creation. The Summit would consist of 5 days of presentations/discussions on: epidemiology, technologies, water, sanitation/hygiene, micro-franchises. One topic per day would be examined by the Summit’s participants, facilitated by an expert panel. Participating organizations would present their experience and formulate recommendations for elaboration of COPIM. Discussions would ensue until reaching agreement on optimal COPIM. The Summit would conclude with registration of all interested organizations in UWON, and its official inauguration with media coverage. The UWON Summit could become a yearly event to learn from experience and continuously improve practices.
Do you have any existing partnerships, and if so, how do you create them?
The partnerships envisioned for UWON include all organizations present in this competition, in addition to all Governments, Aid Agencies, Donor Community and major media:
- Blue Planet Run Foundation: their innovative platform would be the tool for proposal submission by MIPs.
- People and Water: New Water Paradigm would be a required element of COPIM
- One Earth logistics: Botanical body wash would gain world audience when listed in CATE.
- Silver Ceramic Systems: Proposed idea of pilot studies is built-in COPIM since 1) MIP tries different technologies with community 2) technology catalog provides comparable datasheets.
- UNEP Gems: Children’s program of documenting local water bodies would be included in COPIM.
- Potters for Peace: My friend Ron Rivera and all of us technology inventors would finally have a worldwide distribution network!
Impact
Provide one sentence describing your impact/intended impact.
The UWON network aims to solve water and health problems in developing countries in a world-collaborative, community-participative, technologically-appropriated and financially-viable manner.
What are the main barriers to creating or achieving your impact?
The ever-proliferating NGOs exert influence on rural communities just like political parties, and because the competition for funding has become intense, NGOs have a hard time partnering or letting other organization enter their area of work. This has prevented collaborative efforts to solve the problems on a larger scale, in a more systematic manner.
The oh-so-needed funding for NGOs creates bias in the evaluation of water and health projects worldwide. Internet search for monitoring of water and health projects brings little results. However our own monitoring of the UV Bucket project concluded that 53% of the beneficiaries in the peri-urban areas did not use the filter after one year, and 24% of the water inside the UV Bucket had become recontaminated (technological problem corrected since). We know that other filters have those and other problems too (a sample from a ceramic filter in Guatemala showed greater bacterial contamination of the water after the filter than before the filter). Where are those honest-and-transparent study results from the NGOs in the field? Unfortunately all of us NGOs are afraid to lose our funding when reporting such negative (but really only improvement-provoking) results. Not to mention that NGOs often forget to fully evaluate the technology, such is the case of virus removal evaluation, Biosand filters are wonderful but have very low efficiency for viruses which is worrying since it is now demonstrated that Rotavirus is the most common cause of severe diarrhea in children worldwide.
Another barrier are the governments of developing countries selecting trendy technologies due to lack of preparation/expertise, poor information and sometimes corruption.
Finally it is important for all of us, NGOs, governments, donors, and aid agencies to go beyond the simple projects of discharging water filters onto rural communities, hoping to solve the culturally and environmentally complex problem of water.
How many people have you served or plan to serve?
The UV Bucket project is currently serving 6000 rural families or 30,000 persons. The UV Bucket is a highly efficient (log 7 or 99.99999% removal for bacteria, log 4 or 99.99% for viruses) and very rapid (3 liters per minute) household water purifier that was developed in Mexico and won the World Bank Development Marketplace award 2006.
The project is being reviewed by the Mexican Federal Government and its main Ministries to be replicated for 5 million Mexicans in need.
In Guatemala, we are serving one community (pilot study) and a community-participative technology transference study is being organized to involve 8 communities in testing 13 world renowned water purifiers.
The CNN Heroes 2007’s documentary on the UV Bucket has boosted interest from 22 countries. The first UV Bucket Certification/Training Program was therefore created to share the lessons learned in BCS with all interested partners in replicating the project elsewhere. So far, 16 NGOs, government representatives, and private companies have registered for the July 2008 program.
Directly
The UWON network plans to serve all rural community members and peri-urban dwellers of the developing countries through millions of micro-franchise points worldwide that would improve the local water/sanitation/health conditions. The yearly expansion of the network and the continuous rise in the population served could be followed by a specifically-designed application on Google Earth (Google Earth Foundation contacted already by the UV Bucket Project).
Indirectly
The UWON network will also benefit government, NGOs, Aid Agencies and Donors to improve the quality of their work thanks to the exchange of knowledge, field experience and technical expertise in the network. The community members will greatly benefit culturally and psychologically from being taken into account for the elaboration of projects and for the continued improvements of technologies.
Please list any other measures of the impact of your innovation?
The water and health topic will be the first priority of UWON network, but other development challenges could be tackled over time. Renewable energies, improved housing, food livelihood, locally-appropriated income-generating projects might become new program areas of the network.
These development goals promise long-term presence of each micro-franchise as the focal point for different programs. Continued sales of appropriate technologies to accompany community development would provide financial sustainability. Micro-credit loans would offer payments options to guarantee local capacity to obtain necessary technologies.
Is there a policy intervention element to your innovation, if so please describe?
The governments from all developing countries could be invited to participate at the initial Summit for the creation of the UWON network. The governments could evaluate the pertinence of collaborating with the network for implementing health and water projects in their respective countries, particularly in areas where they usually have low coverage such as rural and peri-urban areas. Government programs (for instance well drilling campaigns, nationwide studies of diarrhea and infant mortality rates…etc) could all be channeled and facilitated through the MIPs .
Exactly who are the beneficiaries of your innovation?
- The NGOs will benefit from working in a more systematic and collaborative manner worldwide.
- The communities worlwide will obtain better water/sanitation/health.
- The community members will be empowered to solve problems locally. They will learn to critically analyze technologies.
- The governments, aid agencies, donors will work more efficiently by channeling efforts through UWON.
- The MIPs could erase corruption from aid programs by ensuring that promised help reached community and reporting on it to donors (entry “Observatorio Ecuatoriano del agua¨)
This Entry is about (Issues)
Sustainability
How is your initiative financed (or how do you expect your initiative will be financed)?
Funding will be required for the creation of the technology database and for organizing the first UWON Summit.
Seed-funding will then be needed to start the micro-franchise creation process, or expand on already existing micro-franchise and other distribution network (Scojo, Grameen, PSI, Potters-For-Peace all have potentially unifiable networks).
Once rolling, the sales of technologies would become a sustainable mechanism for financing the growth of the network.
Provide information on your finances and organization:
The Mexican NGO Niparajá AC, in charge of the UV Bucket Project, has the following annual budget:
2005: USD 435,185
2006: USD 670,645
2007: USD 977,817
The streams of revenue are World Bank DM award (USD170,310), Mexican Federal Government (USD85,000), Donations from Private Foundations (for all three of Niparajá´s programs, USD500,000-900,000).
The sales of the UV Bucket, currently at USD10 per system for the rural families of Baja California Sur, now proposed at USD35 for currently-under-review replication projects worldwide, provides a complementary source of income.
What is the potential demand for your innovation?
For water/health/sanitation technologies and ideas, a fraction of the 2 billion people lacking safe water/proper sanitation represent the potential demand. For water purification technologies in particular, there are 20 to 50 recognized solutions, or a potential demand of 40 million each. If a typical target community has 1000 persons, 2 million micro-franchises are necessary. A certification program could train network creators (NEC), likely from participating NGOs, to oversee 20 micro-franchises per region, or a need for 100,000 NECs worldwide, roughly 1000 per country.
What are the main barriers to financial sustainability?
Achieving financial sustainability will require fine-tuning the micro-franchise division of earned income (20-30-30-20) to ensure fairness for all actors involved in the network as well as guarantee sufficient funding for network expansion. These topics will greatly benefit from the experience already gained by the Scojo micro-franchise network and the Grameen Bank micro-credit network.
Also of importance will be the design of locally-appropriated payment mechanisms so that the community members can afford their technology of choice.
The Story
What is the origin of this innovation? Tell us your story.
In 2004, after finishing her Master of Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley, Florence Cassassuce joined Engineers-without-frontiers to test water quality in rural communities of Baja California Sur. The project identified serious water contamination in rural wells (fecal bacteria, arsenic, high salinity).
Florence Cassassuce remained in BCS to intent solving these problems with locally-designed solutions. The partnership with the local Technological University and the involvement of communities in the testing of successive prototypes proved fruitful. In 2006 the iron-nail arsenic filter and the UV Bucket were invented.
The UV Bucket was awarded the World Bank DM2006 Award to be fabricated and distributed to 6000 rural families.
The careful monitoring of the UV Bucket project, in BCS and Guatemala, gave insights into the pitfalls of technological projects. The contamination of the water can often be prevented at the source, family hygiene is key to avoid water recontamination after treatment, limited water volume prevents families from maintaining satisfactory hygiene in the house, cultural elements are key (water technicians in Guatemala receive death threats if chlorine is added to the water), Guatemala families in some communities have two filters (candle and ceramic filter) and use none because of the slow flow rate, sometimes 4 NGOs work in the same village and no change is noticed because they remain external agents. This field experience recently led to the formulation of the idea of a unified micro-franchise network to ensure a transparent, scientifically-rigorous and culturally-rich methodology for water and health projects worldwide.
Please provide a personal bio. Note this may be used in Changemakers marketing material
Florence Cassassuce (1977) graduated from Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussees in Paris (National Civil Engineering School) in 2002 and from the Master of Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley in 2004. She received the World Bank DM2006 award for the invention of the UV Bucket. She was nominated finalist of CNN Heroe 2007 in the “Defending the Planet” category. Since 1995, she has participated in humanitarian projects with Doctors-without-Borders and Engineers-without-Frontiers. She is currently project coordinator for Niparaja AC in La Paz, Mexico.
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