Women Water Stewards - Women Taking the Lead in Income-Generating Sustainable Water Service Projects
Women bear the burdens of lack of water as they spend all day interacting with it; fetching, cleaning, washing, cooking. ASDSW helps women lead water and sanitation micro-enterprises that generate income, provide clean water to communities, and employ environmentally sustainable practices. Supporting women with water solutions impacts community health.
About You
Section 1: About You
Section 2: About Your Organization
Is your initiative connected to an established organization?
Yes
Organization Name
A Single Drop for Safe Water
Organization Website
Organization Phone
+63 48 434 1101
Organization Address
Corner Manalo Ext/Jacana Rd, Puerto Princesa, Palawan
Organization Country
Philippines, PLW
Is your organization a
Non‐profit/NGO/citizen sector organization
How long has this organization been operating?
1‐5 years
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Your idea
Name Your Project
Women Water Stewards - Women Taking the Lead in Income-Generating Sustainable Water Service Projects
Describe Your Idea
Women bear the burdens of lack of water as they spend all day interacting with it; fetching, cleaning, washing, cooking. ASDSW helps women lead water and sanitation micro-enterprises that generate income, provide clean water to communities, and employ environmentally sustainable practices. Supporting women with water solutions impacts community health.
Country your work focuses on
Philippines, XX
Innovation
What makes your idea unique?
Technology alone does not ensure sustainability. A significant number of water and sanitation (WATSAN) technology projects fail due to lack of community demand, local expertise and ongoing financial resources. A Single Drop for Safe Water (ASDSW) Women Water Stewards Program focuses on empowering women to lead income-generating community-led water service providers or what we call PODS (People Offering Deliverable Services) who can plan, design, implement and maintain their own appropriate Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) solutions. ASDSWs community identified needs-based approach builds the capacity of local organizations to have a comprehensive understanding of the connection between water, sanitation and hygiene, recognize health issues and identify key technology and education-based interventions to resolve their own water challenges. Appropriate technologies include community water systems, toilets, rainwater harvesting, tank construction, pumps, wells and household water treatment. Community organizations can often create innovations of these technologies to suit their needs and meet community demand. ASDSW also introduces a breakthrough in water testing called the Portable Microbiology Lab (PML) that allows anyone to test water anywhere at anytime. The PML can be used by anyone with little training. It doesn't require expensive equipment or labs and is incubated by body heat. Communities can learn if their water is contaminated within 24 hours. It is a powerful tool for communities to learn about water contamination as it relates to public health, make informed decisions and take appropriate actions. ASDSW transforms dole-out projects into community-driven water solutions. Our model creates jobs, fosters local expertise, utilizes locally available materials and harnesses local resources.
Do you have a patent for this idea?
No
Impact
This Entry is about (Issues)
Tell us about the social impact of your innovation. Please include both numbers and stories as evidence of this impact
Esther Magwa was hired out of Engineering School. Civil engineers are responsible for building public works such as roads and highways. However, they do not learn how to build efficient water systems. ASDSW closely mentored her to design small-scale water systems and project manage community implementation. These skills make her more marketable and valuable.
Josefina A. Tandoc is the President of a local community based water service organization, or what we call PODS (People Offering Deliverable Services). This program united two villages to plan, and implement one water system to share. Through her leadership, the volunteers from the two villages built a gravity-fed spring water system servicing over 350 households. She promotes Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) education, tests the water with the PML to ensure that the water is still clean and manages this village collective which collects user fees to maintain the system, pay her staff and reinvest in community development. Even the two male village captains serve under her! After, the completion of the water system, she led the organization through a negotiation with the Department of Environmental and Natural Resources to reforest their watershed using some of PODS reinvestment savings.
Aeta Women - The Aeta is a displaced indigenous group that had been moved fourteen times after the Mt Pinatubo volcano eruption. Education was inconsistent and access to clean water and sanitation was lacking. A few months ago, five people in their community died. After ASDSW conducted a WASH seminar teaching routes of water contamination and taught the community to test their own water using the Portable Microbiology Lab, they realized that it was extremely contaminated with recent fecal contamination. They were able to make the connection between contaminated water and health, and conclude that the cause of death and illness was due to their open defecation practices. An adhoc women’s group was formed and in less than six weeks they built almost 50 toilets.
Sulu Women’s Biosand Filter (BSF) Project emerged from a technology and WASH Education training we conducted for a women’s group in one of the most conflict-ridden Muslim areas in the Philippines. After their success in creating a micro-business building and selling filters, they were highlighted by Noor-us Salaam, the largest women’s Muslim organization in the Philippines. They are now making plans to replicate what their Sulu sisters have done.
Problem: Describe the primary problem(s) that your innovation is addressing
With the growing concerns of a world plagued with social inequities and environmental degradation, it is crucial for a future of sustainability that we seek guidance and leadership from our natural caretakers: women. By addressing the environmental conditions that create gender inequity, we see that empowering women is central to solving the global water crises.
Women and girls around the world carry the burden of water
• every day to fetch enough for drinking, cleaning, washing, cooking
• sometimes five gallons (50 pounds) at a time every day, causing significant physical strain
• in some regions spending all day so women can’t work and girls can’t go to school
• when family members fall ill, women are often the caretakers
Lack of sanitation
• opens women and girls to potential violence and rape when they have to openly relieve themselves
• prevents girls from going to school during menstruation
Also, women’s hygiene behavior affects the entire family. Traditionally, she provides the water, uses it to clean the house, children and for cooking. Despite the entire family employing proper hygiene practices, if she does not, she can put the whole family at risk.
Lastly, after sitting in many conferences, government/ NGO planning meetings and think tanks, Gemma observed that when men approached water projects, their contribution was infrastructure driven, whereas women’s priority was generally focused on sustainability and efficiency to provide services for their families and communities. When she would attend these gatherings, she would find herself counting the women in the room and realize she was a small minority and rarely invited to provide her input. She believes the more women who are actually doing the work on the ground involved in the decision-making and leadership; technology and implementation; maintenance and management, the more opportunities they would have to be considered a viable voice in policy change.
Actions: Describe the steps that you are taking to make your innovation a success. What might prevent that success?
When Gemma Bulos first founded A Single Drop for Safe Water, she made a personal commitment to ensure that at least half of ASDSW programs must include women and that our staff would mentor women engineers, facilitators and technology trainers to lead traditionally men-led trainings. ASDSW offers ongoing mentorship and capacity building trainings not only in technology implementation and maintenance, but also in leadership development which includes action, strategic and business planning, needs assessing and management.
Further, one of the key components of ASDSWs mentoring program supports women as WASH Educators. The deep relationship between water and health is the foundation for WASH education. Women as traditional caretakers can encourage proper hygiene practices and promote the protection and preservation of water resources as vital to community health.
Challenges to achieving success may emerge from men feeling threatened by women taking a leading role in what may be traditionally male dominated such as technology construction and design. However, ASDSW considers water as an equalizer and potentially a unifier. Our main goal as an organization is to facilitate a conversation where we discover a place where we can all agree. We believe that our shared need for water can be the basis of consensus and the ideas and plans can ripple out from there. Including everyone in the implementation of a project that provides for the entire community, everyone has an opportunity to contribute their individual gifts. In many cases, although women learn how to construct the technologies, they have often taken the lead as educators and managers while men take a role as implementers, which creates a very harmonious environment.
Results: Describe the expected results of these actions over the next three years. Please address each year separately, if possible
ASDSW was seeded by ASD (USA) to create an innovative model for community water self-reliance. In the beginning of our fourth year, we received a grant from the Innovations for the Base of the Pyramid Grant from Candian’s International Development Resource Center and the Ateneo School of Government to conduct a comparative study to identify the indicators of accelerated success of PODS compared to current organizational development models in the water/sanitation sector.
Previous years: To date ASDSW has achieved the following:
• impacted over 120,000 people with access to clean water and/or sanitation
• nearly half of the projects are income-generating
• at least one-third to half the people we train are women
• core management of ASDSW and over half the staff are all women
• all training modules and field guides published
2010
• At least another 30,000 people impacted
• At least eight more PODS created in the Philippines
• Launch a customized Women Water Stewards Program for Noor-us Salaam’s Muslim Groups
• Through trainings and organizational development, ASDSW will support ASD to base another Women Water Stewards Program in Uganda outreaching to other countries in Africa
• Strengthen 4 more regional training NGOs
2011
• At least another 40,000 people impacted
• At least 10 more PODS created in the Philippines
• At least 100 more women trained in Uganda
• At least five new income-generating projects launched in Africa
2012
• hand over ASDSW to our Filipino staff
• 50,000 people impacted
• ASDSW investing 2% of income to opening Uganda office
How many people will your project serve annually?
More than 10,000
What is the average monthly household income in your target community, in US Dollars?
Less than $50
Does your innovation seek to have an impact on public policy?
Yes
If your innovation seeks to impact public policy, how?
ASDSW has have already seen impacts on policies from our model. For example, in the Philippines, there is government funding to support Gender Integration and Inclusion. In Muslim areas where communities have engaged local government to lobby support, we have seen the local government channel financial support from that fund to support women’s inclusion in water programs and management.
Also, ASDSW supports capacity building for local government at the municipal and village level to focus on WASH issues to support local initiatives. We create Municipal WASH Task Forces (MWTF) and facilitate a process where they develop a muncipal wide WASH action plan to make coordinated efforts to support local projects. In some cases, WASH mandates have been established which has resulted in funding towards WASH initiatives.
Our goal is to continue to develop and strengthen community led WASH initiatives so it will give the communities lobbying power to create a government mandate to ensure WASH allocations in the municipal budget.
Sustainability
What stage is your project in?
Operating for 1‐5 years
Does your organization have a board of directors or an advisory board?
Yes
Does your organization have a non monetary partnerships with NGOs?
Yes
Does your organization have a non monetary partnerships with businesses?
No
Does your organization have a non monetary partnerships with government?
Yes
Please tell us more about how partnerships could be critical to the success of your innovation
Some of the challenges we see in creating community owned projects is because of donor-driven aid as well as lack of political will. First, donors have agendas that can often lead to outcomes not always set by community members. This creates a challenge in sustainability because communities don’t have a say in the project and have no sense of “ownership”.
Secondly, when a community plans to offer a public service that by law should be provided by the government, lack of support can lead to a project never getting off the ground.
Thirdly, ASDSW cannot do the work alone when there is such a great need for water and sanitation services. Replicating the training program to local NGOs is important to reach scale.
ASDSW engages the donors, local government and NGOs to be involved in the planning process. Everyone plays an important role and each should have their needs voiced to ensure appropriate representation. Some typical contributions each might offer but not exclusively or simultaneously
• Funder – investment in community “programs” and professional services rather than hand-out infrastructure driven “projects”
• Local Government
o MWTF acting as a liaison for the community to lobby for government allocated WASH funding
o Local politician – endorsement
o Resource support – transportation, venue, materials and tools
• Local NGOs
o Local trainers
o Monitoring and evaluation
o Community mobilizing
We would like to learn more about how your initiative is financially supported. Please explain your business plan/revenue model
ASDSW was seeded by A Single Drop in the USA through individual donations and Echoing Green Foundation through its Fellowship Program. However, we believe that if we are preaching and teaching self-reliance by offering valuable community services we believe that we should be self-reliant and value our services ourselves. ASDSW receives competitive professional fees for our services, which is our main source of income to date. Just as ASDSW received Donor Investment to build our capacity, we transfer that model to our work with communities by having donors not only offer communities a “hand up” instead of a “handout”, but also pay our professional fees.
To achieve this we engage three levels of support teams. We work with donors to seed fund community WASH Initiatives; government to offer logistical, financial and/or resource support; and communities to offer counterpart such as free labor, tools, housing for trainers, meals for trainings etc.
In our first five years, we set a goal to be independent from international funding and donations. In less than four years of operation we have a staff of fifteen: two in administration and fourteen field staff. At this point in our growth, we access a majority of our income and project funding from in-country sources and cover nearly all our operations with our professional fees.
As we set a goal to replicate this model of self-reliance in other countries, ASD will raise donations in the USA to support start-up capital for another office. ASDSW will offer a portion of its income as an additional investment to pay forward ASDs initial start-up investment as well. in addition, ASDSW will offer capacity building trainings to new international staff and host bi-annual learning exchanges to share best practices and continue to build staff capacity. ASDs next target area will be in Uganda focusing specifically on women's capacity building.
The Story
What was the defining moment that led you to this innovation?
Gemma Bulos, a former musician and pre-school teacher who was meant to be in the World Trade Center on the morning of 9/11, responded to the tragedy by devoting her life to a cause she believed would promote peace and equality among all people; access to safe water. She wrote a song called “WE RISE” that used water as a metaphor for unity in action. Based on the concept that it takes a single drop of water to start a wave, she traveled around the world using her music to inspire people to mobilize and take action to address the freshwater crisis. She built an unprecedented global peace movement called the “Million Voice Choir” that mobilized over 100 cities in over 60 countries on September 21, 2004 in celebration of the UN International Day of Peace. Queen Latifah for Cover Girl awarded her the CG Vibes Award for women changing the world through music and Gemma used her award money to start water projects in the Philippines, to live the legacy of giving back that her father had always wanted as a Filipino expatriate.
After witnessing so many water projects around the world that were non-functional due to disrepair or lack of funds and where women were not being appropriately represented at the decision making table, she knew that the project had to be approached in an innovative and inclusive way. She partnered with Kevin Lee, former Water Sanitation Engineer who was a Peace Corp Volunteer in the Philippines to develop the award-winning social entrepreneurial PODS program.
Tell us about the person—the social innovator—behind this idea.
Gemma Bulos and Kevin Lee spawned this idea out of the dissatisfaction and frustration of aid driven community water projects failing. Gemma works from the top down, and Kiwi works from the ground up. And where they meet in the middle, they strike a delicate balance between vision and implementation. Gemma's experience as an advocate for water rights and raising awareness of global water issues has connected her to a vast network of leaders and organizations working in the water and environment sector. Through her worldwide speaking engagements, she has been learning simple water solutions that have made great impact around the world. She is also very creative in terms of connecting the issue of water with peace concerns. In addition to working on the ground offering trainings, she appeals to every sector of society to take responsibility for their water resources. Kevin brings his technical expertise along with his experience in managing steel mills, community mobilizing and implementing grassroots community water projects in the Philippines. His first hand knowledge of the cultural challenges in rural areas is crucial to the acceptance and appropriateness of this project. His patience and humility make him a strong and respected organizer and leader who can spearhead a nationwide campaign to supply safe water to every community in need, efficiently and in a timely fashion. Gemma's passion drives the mission forward, and Kevin's technical expertise takes the vision into action.
How did you first hear about Changemakers?
Email from Changemakers
If through another source, please provide the information
ICRW
Does your project address any of the following barriers to women’s technology access and use?
Women’s time poverty, Social norms, Economic or institutional constraints, Women’s lack of involvement in the technology development process.
If you checked any of the boxes above, please explain how.
Women and girls can spend all day fetching water and can spend significant amounts of time, energy and money taking care of sick family members who fall ill from water related disease. In addition to alleviating the costs of illness and lack of time for livelihood opportunities, empowering women to hold positions in their organization as paid employees such as technicians, accountants/bookkeepers, salespeople and managers can generate income for women and add to the family income.
When women play the role of WASH Educators and community organizers, they build social marketing and public speaking skills that build confidence and bring more value to their expertise.
As technicians, who can build and implement appropriate technologies, women bridge the technology gap by learning basic masonry, construction and in some cases simple engineering.
Does your project involve women in one or more of the following stages of the technology lifecycle? Identification of the problem the technology will solve:
Technology introduction, Technology training, Technology supply and distribution, Assessment and evaluation.
If you checked any of the boxes above, please explain how you will ensure women’s involvement in each relevant phase of the technology lifecycle.
As a Filipina American, and Founder of ASD (USA) and ASDSW, Gemma Bulos was committed to ensuring that women have a leading role in every aspect of our work. Currently, ASDSWs upper management staff are all Filipina women. Over half our employees are women and one of our key engineers is also a woman. When we are mobilizing the community to create the PODS, we ensure that there is at least one third women at the planning table (in most cases there is at least half if not more). They are involved in every stage of planning, implementation, management and maintenance. They often hold leadership positions in PODS, as well as implementers, water quality monitors using the Portable Microbiology Lab and appropriate technology technicians. In ASDSWs organizational infrastructure, women lead as managers, facilitators and new project negotiators, thus making them role models to other women they train.
Another important role women play in program planning are as interviewers for the acquirement of baseline data to determine the best actions and strategies to implement. They will also be a key voice in outreach and social marketing to educate the community on effective WASH practices.
ASDSWs support of the ASD (USA) expansion into Africa will be focusing mainly on women.
If women are a focus of your project, how did this focus evolve?
The project focused on women from its conception..
Which type of women will your project reach directly?
Rural, Low income.
In what ways does your project team/leadership involve women?
It is led by a woman/women., It is led by a woman/women from a developing country., The core project team includes women., The core project team includes women from developing countries..
Has your organization formed any new partnerships in response to this challenge? If so, with what type/s of organization/s?
Non-profit/NGO/community-based organization, Government, Women's organization.
Has your project leadership had prior experience with the following?
Working with women, Working with technologies.
 | 109 weeks agoGemma Bulos updated this Competition Entry. |
| 110 weeks agoGemma Bulos submitted this idea. |
