Clean Water Initiative

1- The coffee you drink every morning is grown by farmers who do not even have access to water suitable for human consumption. This is the case for almost 4 million of farmers in Colombia. In consequence, farmers and their families get sick with diarrhea, food-borne illnesses, and skin diseases. 

2- I want to bring drinking water to 200 coffee farmer families that inhabit the mountains of Colombia. I want to do that through a process of social technology transfer. Where I will not only provide them with the filter, but I will teach them how to build it, how to clean it, and how to scale it.

3- In this way, I will not only give them the fish, but I will teach them how to fish. This is the only way to have a long-term sustainable solution that improves the living conditions of Latin American farmers.

According to the Colombian National Statistics Department, 3.6 million people (13.6% of the total population of Colombia) do not have access to water fit for human consumption in Colombia. In other words, 8 out of every 100 inhabitants of Colombia do not have drinking water. The situation is not better in other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. For this reason, dehydration, diarrhea, food-borne illness, and skin diseases are common in such populations. According to the National Institute of Health of Colombia (2016), the population that suffers the most as a consequence of consuming dirty water is the peasant population.

Most peasant farms are far from urban centers, they are scattered settlements that usually consist of few farms (6 to 12) and are separated from each other. This is a problem for local and national governments since the construction of water and aqueduct treatment systems for such farms is very expensive and unsustainable. For this reason, individual water treatment solutions (filters) turn out to be adequate to tackle the problem of lack of drinking water in rural sectors not only in Colombia, but in Latin America and the Caribbean. 

1- In the first stage of my project, I want to bring drinking water to 200 families of farmers who grow coffee, in the department of Caldas, in Colombia (a region known as the coffee zone). I have already had the opportunity to work with them, I know the community action leaders of the future beneficiary villages in the municipalities of Chinchiná, Neira, Palestina and Manizales.

2-In the past, I had the opportunity to deliver 1015 filters to extremely poor families in the coffee zone, this led me to understand that 1015 filters were not enough to end the problem. Since the materials to keep them running were difficult to get. 

So I decided to design a very low cost filter, easy to build with local materials, easy to clean, easy to scale, and easy to maintain.

1- I will provide access to water suitable for human consumption to the farmers who grow coffee in Colombia. Also, I will contribute to the decrease in hospital consultations for diarrhea, and those other diseases that are carried by rural water.

2- The water filter to be transferred is a 100 liter upflow packed bed filter, made up of gravel, fine gravel, fine sand, and activated carbon. The filter container is a tank that can be made of plastic or ceramic, which is positioned directly in the kitchen of each of the coffee farms. The operation of the filter is very simple, it removes not only the mud, but the biological material contained in the water, which generally comes from a river, stream or water source.

Materials are easily found in each of the future beneficiary rural villages. The plus of the filter, in contrast to what is described in the relevant scientific literature on water treatment, is the residence time of the water in each of the packed beds, particularly in the bed of sand and activated carbon (the water passing through such bed, reaches a point where the oxygen concentration is zero, so the bacteria that depend on oxygen, die).

A social technology transfer methodology will be used, in which all the know-how will be transferred to the farmers. In this way, they will be free to scale the filter as they wish. This is how I want to build self-sustaining and resilient communities.

Easy to build, easy to clean, filter´s materials can be found where the farmers live. All the materials are very cheap. Whilst,  the traditional filters are expensive, hard to clean, hard to build, and once they get broken it is impossible to find the replacement parts in rural villages. 

We will provide them with the know how of the filter so that they can scale up the filter design. 

Fact: Farmers do not have access to clean water

Reason: For the local and national governments it is financially and institutionally unfeasible to build treatment and aqueduct plants, for small towns made up of 6 to 12 farms. 

Consequence: Coffee growers and their families fall ill with diarrhea and other diseases caused by the dirty water they consume.

Reason for change: The installation of low-cost individual solutions (the filters in each kitchen of the coffee farms) will contribute to the solution of the institutional and financial problem.

Consequence of the reason for change: The farmers and their families will stop getting sick, since they are already consuming clean water.

Long-term consequence: Improvement of the living conditions of the farmers who grow coffee, as well as their families.

Long-term national institutional consequence: Contribution to the goal of sustainable development related to drinking water coverage in rural populations.

Cultural consequence: Building resilient and sustainable communities, since the farmers who grow coffee already know how to build their own filter.

1- 0 

2- 200

3- 5000

My goals for the following year are:

To have collected $ 15,000 for the execution of stage 1 of my idea: The installation of 200 filters in rural coffee communities in Colombia.

My goals for the next 5 years:

Drastically expand the coverage of access to drinking water for all Colombian farmers (4 million) having the Colombian government as the main client.

Replicating the model to Latin American coffee countries.

The main barrier is the initial capital that I need for the construction of the first 200 filters. This step is the bottleneck, since it is the opportunity to build experience and subsequently sell a successful experience to other governments interested in improving the conditions of rural coffee farmers.

Once the 200 filter barrier is overcome (stage 1), the entire experience will be documented in order to be replicated in other countries. In short, the barrier is financial.

I am working on it through the gofundme, and through the platform of the chair of social entrepreneurship of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel.

There is a great opportunity if a government is framed as a potential customer. Particularly to the governments of the countries that share the same problems, for example the coffee producing countries of Latin America and the Caribbean: Cuba, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Guadalupe, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, JAmaina, Martinique, Mexico , Nicaragua, Panama, Brazil.

Not at the moment.

Just me, at the moment. 

Because I know the communities to intervene. I am a chemical engineer and I worked 6 years in the health department of the Caldas government, in Colombia. My main task was to teach rural communities how to treat water before consuming it. I also worked in the public health laboratory of the same institution, performing physicochemical and microbiological analysis of water samples from 27 cities.

I gave 1015 filters to 1015 farmer families, this technology did not work because the filters were very sophisticated and expensive. Likewise, the spare parts of the filters could only be obtained in the capital of the country, which made the filters difficult to be adopted by the farmers.

I know the partner institutions both in Colombia and Belgium.

Currently I do not have a team, since I do not have the money to pay their wages. However, I have the institutional willingness of the interest groups.

I know about the complexities of logistics to mobilize filters towards remote rural communities. For this reason, it is essential to make strategic alliances with stakeholders in Colombia and Belgium, in order to successfully complete my project.

Currently I have as partners the following institutions in Colombia: Dirección Territorial de Salud de Caldas, Gobernación de Caldas, Chinchiná Mayor's Office, Palestine Mayor's Office, Neira Mayor's Office, Manizales Mayor's Office. I also know the presidents of the community action boards of the future beneficiary rural villages.

In Belgium: The chair of Social Entrepreneurship of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel.

In United States: Clinton Global Initiative - University 

The university in Brussels provides academic and technical support. Institutions in Colombia will have as their main role the mobilization and organization of rural communities. The Clinton Global Initiative University has provided me with training on stakeholder engagement and business modeling. 

Key resources: Human talent with experience in rural communities, economic resources for the purchase of filter materials, resources for travel to rural villages. The financial resource for the design of the educational material and for its respective printing.

Partners and Key Stakeholders:

Caldas Territorial Health Directorate

Caldas Governorate, Chinchiná, Palestine, Manizales and Neira Mayors.

Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Clinton Global Initiative University, rural communities per se, presidents of community action boards.

Cost Structure:

Price of materials and the subsequent displacement towards rural communities to impact. When the purchase of such materials begins to be greater due to a greater activity of installation of the filters, the relative price of each of the materials will begin to decrease by 17.5% annually and by 27.6% for each filter built. That is, the more filters are installed, the more profitable it is.

Key Activities:

Purchase of materials

Stakeholder involvement

Preparation of rural communities prior to the construction of the filters

Mobilization of filter materials to sites of interest

Quarterly monitoring of filter performance by the health department of the Caldas.

Construction of the service portfolio with a successful experience

Marketing of services to other countries that share the same problems 

Value proposition:

The farmers will have access to drinking water for free, they will be able to scale the filter as they wish and according to their need.

Social Impact: Fewer people per year (rural adults and children) consulting in hospitals for acute diarrheal diseases, foodborne illnesses, and skin allergies.

At the moment I am running a campaign to collect donations to start the first stage of my idea (200 families with clean drinking water).

Then, with such a successful experience (after having installed 200 filters in Colombia), I plan to offer the services of construction of resilient and sustainable communities to other governments in Latin America that share the same problems and that preferably focus the economic activities of their farmers on the cultivation of coffee (for the similarity in water pollutants).

Once I have the financial resources to execute the first stage of my idea, a year later I will have impacted 200 families, then I will expand to the Caribbean countries and other coffee countries in South America. 

My product is not the filter itself, but the social technology transfer of know-how. 

It seems to me a fantastic opportunity to be able to show the world that science, technology and innovation can be applied to solve social problems.

The platform of opportunity provided by the Universidad de los Andes, the Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey and MIT will help me improve my idea, to better understand how I can impact more people.

Also, the jury is made up of people that I admire personally and professionally.

I believe that the opportunity to receive feedback from the technical, business and strategic points of view from the best in the world is sufficient motivation to apply to the Tprize.

The Clean water initiative will have greater weight against angel investors if they find out that I was trained / selected / awarded by the best in the world.

With the MIT D-LAB

I know of many initiatives coming from MIT D-Lab that are technology based but society oriented.

I would like to receive training with them in order to learn from the special missions that they carry out in developing countries.