This project is a collaboration between Dr Samantha Kies-Ryan, the co-director and founder of Earth Water People, an Australian profit-for-purpose company working in clean water supply in the Solomon Islands, and Dr Donna Wate, a GP and the director and founder of Mere Care, a Solomon Islands company working in urban preventative health, particularly women’s health. Samantha and Donna are working together on this project to offer an innovative solution to the challenge of household access to clean water and its implications for hygiene and family health, particularly as Honiara faces the impacts of COVID-19.
Earth Water People have developed a prototype water filtration system using a ceramic filter and other low-cost, locally available materials and tools. This project aims to evaluate the water filtration system as an alternative, low-cost household level water treatment technology, which is designed to help filter most dangerous forms of water-borne bacteria and viruses. Currently, this product is not manufactured in, nor imported into Solomon Islands. The filtration candles are commercially available in many other countries and have potential benefits for households in urban areas of Solomon Islands.
The project would like to empower women entrepreneurs to make, distribute, sell, repair and maintain these water filtration systems throughout the city. Many of these women entrepreneurs around the city are already producing and marketing other types of goods, including hygiene and sanitation products and there is opportunity for them to do the same with these ceramic filtration systems. This concept of local household to household production and marketing could utilise existing networks to distribute this low-cost, low-technology household water filtration system.
Dr Donna Wate talking to the women about the importance of clean water to good health at the Klin Wata Helti Laef TAS workshop.
About 50-60% of all people in Honiara have access to safe drinking water provided by the national water utility. Those who don’t have a water utility connection use other available water sources that are generally untreated or their quality is unknown. These water sources include bores, springs, rainwater or hand-dug wells. If household income allows, households may buy bottled water or commercially filtered water. During heavy rainfall events that cause unacceptable levels of sediment to enter the town drinking water supplies, even the water utility is forced to advise their customers to boil water due to insufficient treatment capacity and risk of unsafe drinking water. However, alternative options of other affordable and appropriate household level water treatment are not readily available and boiling water instructions are not always followed.
Samantha and Donna are passionate about empowering grassroots women entrepreneurs to make, sell, maintain and repair the water filtration kits themselves, putting them in charge of their family’s health and giving them access to a sustainable income stream. This project seeks to address SDG 5 – gender equality, SDG 6 – clean water and sanitation, and SDG 8 – decent work and economic growth.
Women learning how to make the water filtration systems in the TAS workshop in Honiara in June.
Last year Earth Water People and Mere Care secured seed funding from the International Centre for International Partnerships through their Pacific Connect program supporting entrepreneurs in Australia and the Pacific. This seed funding was used to undertake a technology applicability assessment with key stakeholders and grassroots women entrepreneurs using the Technology Applicability Framework (TAF). This Technology Adaptability Assessment gave the project team a chance to test their idea with grassroots women entrepreneurs, to understand how and if it will work and be sustainable for them as a business in the local environment, and what support may be needed, including the role of digital technologies, business and leadership training and hygiene education. Microbiology tests were also imported to be able to test and prove the efficacy of the water filtration systems.
This study has adapted and applied the Technology Applicability Framework developed by the Skat Foundation (2013) to analyse the suitability of the water filtration system technology to the urban context of Honiara, Solomon Islands. The Technology Applicability Framework (TAF) is a decision support tool on the applicability, scalability and sustainability of a specific WASH technology to provide lasting services in a specific context and on the readiness for its introduction. Fieldwork for the research study was undertaken by Shaun and Dr Samantha Kies-Ryan, Dr Donna Wate and Mary Ramosaea and Mary Taupiri in Honiara from March-June 2022.
Our market research found that 100% of women spoken to had no confidence that their water supply was clean, whether it was town water supply, rainwater or bore water. They reported multiple waterborne diseases and infections in their families.
For the women who were consulted, who all ran their own small-scale businesses selling in the markets or through their social networks or online, the potential to be a vendor and make, sell, repair and maintain the kits was very appealing.
The water filtration systems were not found to have competition at the household level, in that it was cheaper than other clean water alternatives. The ability to have control and confidence over the cleanliness of their household water supply, and keep down their household costs, was reported to be highly desirable to the women interviewed. The experience of seeing the water filtration system in action and being able to taste the clean water for themselves, created high demand for the system.
The seed funding allowed us to test our idea and its suitability in the local marketplace. The Klin Wata Helti Laef project has the potential to have much broader benefits than just the women entrepreneurs interviewed, because based on the findings the project design and the product itself can be adapted much more effectively to the local context.
A pilot is required to further test the idea, especially around vendor support in the social enterprise model (which is new to the Solomon Islands), as well as ongoing monitoring and repairs.
Through engaging with women at the grassroots, community level, the project has great capacity to also incorporate with awareness around the benefits of clean water to family health and hygiene, as well as on-the-job practical financial literacy and leadership training for women running their own business. But this will require a larger pilot over 18-24 months, to fully develop and test. While tested in the Solomon Islands, the accessible technology has potential to be adapted and rolled out in other Pacific contexts where confidence in the quality of household water supply is low.
Earth Water People and Mere Care are currently seeking partners who are interested in partnering in this business initiative. For more information and to request the Technology Applicability Study, please contact us.