DRIP: Drought Resilience Impact Platform

Evan Thomas is an Associate Professor and Director of the Mortenson Center in Global Engineering (MCGE) at the University of Colorado Boulder. Daily, his team monitors the water supplies of millions of people across Africa. Evan is a member of the NASA and USAID SERVIR Applied Sciences Team, applying remote sensing to global health. Previously as COO of DelAgua Health Evan managed a $25 million health intervention in Rwanda reaching 1.8 million and reducing the prevalence of diarrhea (29%) and acute respiratory infection (25%) in children under 5. 

Evan's breadth of academic expertise, impact-oriented research, and technical innovations drives the consortium-led Drought Resilience Impact Platform to combat global food and water security challenges in climate-impacted communities throughout the Horn of Africa. 

Evan has a PhD in Aerospace Engineering, is a registered Professional Engineer, and has a Masters in Public Health. Evan was previously an aerospace engineer at NASA.

We can end the cycle of drought emergencies in the arid regions of Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia. Drought-driven humanitarian emergencies can be prevented if groundwater is reliably made available at strategic locations during cycles of water stress.

DRIP - The Drought Resilience Impact Platform’s comprehensive systems design integrates early detection and planning with proactive groundwater management to ensure water availability, thus enabling drought-prone communities to become effective managers in the prevention of these humanitarian crises. It replaces reactive and expensive short-term assistance measures like water trucking, with a framework for drought resilience. Enacted within local institutional and governance framework, DRIP can direct adaptation responses, secure ongoing delivery of key services, and deliver assistance specifically when and where it is needed.

DRIP seeks to empower vulnerable populations within sub-Saharan Africa to increase their drought resilience and water security, helping to preserve their way of life.

Millions of people living in the drought-prone Horn of Africa face persistent threat from a lack of safe, reliable and affordable water year-round. 

Drought emergencies occur when reduced rainfall, exacerbated by climate change, combine with limited community capacity and institutional failures to cause dramatic reductions in access to water for people, livestock and agriculture.This lack of water results in catastrophic crop failures, public health stress, economic shocks, and displacement of people, disrupting patterns of nomadic migration.

The arid regions of Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia are experiencing increasing frequency and severity of drought conditions. Among the most marginalized communities in East Africa, UNICEF estimates there are 19.5 million pastoral people in the Horn of Africa, of whom 40 percent survive on less than one dollar a day. 

Historically, responses to drought have been reactive, involving international emergency assistance to save lives and livelihoods, that then disappears when the immediate crisis dissipates. The destabilizing impact of drought emergencies increases with each successive event, leading to vulnerability and insecurity in this complex region of Africa. DRIP strives to prevent these drought-driven humanitarian emergencies by ensuring groundwater is reliably made available at strategic locations during cycles of water stress.

DRIP links in-situ sensors deployed in East Africa with remote sensing data to improve estimates for rainfall and groundwater availability, and will develop a localized model for drought forecasting. Using localized drought forecasts and groundwater sustainability estimates to identify and prioritize strategically selected groundwater borehole systems, DRIP can ensure water delivery during dry and drought seasons. We will operationalize DRIP’s borehole water services through pay-for-performance contracting, ensuring that all institutions and partners are incentivized to ensure water asset management and year-round safe water supplies. DRIP includes:

• Systems analysis to understand the actors and factors that support increased water and food security;

• Groundwater quality, sustainability and asset monitoring;

• Online integration of in-situ and remote sensing data with localized drought forecasts;

• Decision-response tools to identify water service gaps and forecast drought;

• Translation of service gaps and resource shortages into performance based water security actions, led by local organizations.

Recognizing the critical role sustainable WASH systems play in mitigating the spread of disease especially in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, we are also working with our partners at Unilever to supplement our water access efforts through soap provisioning in communally utilized water sites.

DRIP targets many of the most vulnerable populations within sub-Saharan Africa – agriculturalists and pastoralists living on subsistence farming and livestock, prone to migration due to water and resource insecurity, and are often demographically marginalized ethnic groups. Preventable death and malnutrition, exacerbated by recurrent drought, hits hardest in the pastoral communities. DRIP seeks to empower these communities to increase their drought resilience and water security, helping to preserve their way of life.

DRIP strives to amplify efforts already underway. With data utilized by over a dozen local and international partners including county, regional and national government entities, aid organizations and international donors, the DRIP Consortium:

• Monitors water supplies of 3 million people in arid Kenya and Ethiopia using satellite connected sensors;

• Improves water services and drought resilience by linking this data to regional water service providers and national policy makers;

• Evaluates impact in Kenya and Ethiopia focused on improving water access during extreme drought.

DRIP is an inaugural member of the Million Lives Club, Vanguard, recognizing our positive impact on at least a million people living on less than $5 per day. The Million Lives Club selection committee includes USAID, UNICEF, Canada Grand Challenges, GIZ, UK AID, and UNDP.

DRIP addresses each of these dimensions, in its resolve to prioritize the needs of marginalized communities, ensuring vital access to safe, sustainable water resources; its ability to drive forward collaborative technical solutions & global awareness with local partners to end drought crises in the Horn of Africa; and its dedication to flipping the script toward a novel, cost-effective method of tackling global challenges through preventative maintenance of critical water infrastructure, rather than retroactive relief. USAID estimates that for every $1 invested in resilience in areas of recurrent crises, nearly $3 will be saved in averted losses and humanitarian relief aid.

I have been working in east Africa on water security since 2003. In 2007, I founded a company that was the first to earn carbon credits associated with drinking water treatment. We took this business model to scale in Kenya in 2010 reaching 4.5 million people with water filters, and in 2014 in Rwanda reaching 1.8 million people with cookstoves and 500,000 with water filters. These efforts identified a clear gap in both financing and monitoring global health interventions. In 2010, I founded SweetSense Inc. to develop and deploy sensors to monitor water security globally. SweetSense has deployed sensors monitoring 3 million people’s water supplies in the region today. This data identified opportunities to improve cost effective water security in drought prone regions. From this work, our team developed the concept for DRIP. 

The DRIP concept for water security in vulnerable, drought-prone communities is a collaborative, co-designed effort, initially and continuously driven forth by the Mortenson Center in Global Engineering in partnership with the Millennium Water Alliance and its members, enabled by sensor and data technologies and consortiums including SweetSense, RCMRD, FEWSNET, the Kenya National Drought Management Authority and the Ethiopia Ministry of Water, Irrigation and Energy.

My passion for this work stems from my earliest experiences as a global engineer. With training in engineering, journalism, and global development, I joined Engineers Without Borders to work in Rwanda developing rainwater catchment and water treatment systems, and improving solar infrastructure. Spending significant time in these communities in the context of a post-genocide country, I came to understand the staggering realities of global inequalities that displaced the happier story of productive voluntourism. This realization propelled my career in creating lasting solutions to mitigate the impacts of poverty, particularly in the wake of climate change.

One of the most pervasive problems includes the abandonment of one-off projects intended to improve health and livelihoods of people in developing communities, including water pumps and filters, cookstoves, latrines, and solar lighting systems, typically with two-year periods of impact evaluation. Often we see when money runs out, people move on. Similarly, drought response is often reactive, involving international emergency assistance which then disappears when the immediate crisis dissipates. 

Our solution prioritizes long-term support, including pay-for-performance contracting mechanisms and strong partnerships with institutional systems and governance. DRIP has the infrastructure and community support to transcend the problem of intermittent and expensive aid relief.

Our team’s combined success in implementation, partnership development, and expertise in creating solutions to WASH challenges positions us to succeed in delivering significant impact for the communities that need them most.

Funded by USAID, our Center leads a $15.3 million, four-country, multi-partner study to identify institutional and governance conditions that result in effective improvements of WASH systems in this region. We have successfully designed and deployed sensors that enable maintenance of water systems for over three million people yearly in the Horn of Africa. Our team also led a $25 million water and energy intervention in Rwanda. We are ready to scale proven capabilities and deliver a solution to drought emergencies.

Our core partner, the Millennium Water Alliance (MWA) leverages expertise at convening government actors, NGOs and private sector partners to coordinate our work on the ground. MWA currently leads a $35 million program with over 20 private, NGO, and government partners throughout Kenya. MWA also convenes a program in Ethiopia using systems-strengthening and facilitation to improve WASH service delivery. MWA maintains relationships with community, government, local stakeholders, and extensive expertise working on water services, planning and management in Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia.

DRIP was recently recognized for the 2020 San Francisco Design Week Award, and is in the running as a Top 100 candidate within the Bold Solutions Network for MacArthur 100&Change, a $100 million global competition tol fund a single proposal to make measurable progress toward solving a significant problem.

I first started designing community water treatment projects in Rwanda in 2003. Between 2003 and 2016, I grew a volunteer, village based project into a nationwide program employing nearly a thousand people and investing $25 million dollars in reaching nearly two million people with a cost-effective, accountable and sustainable public health intervention. Along the way, I quit my dream job at NASA to commit to working full time in Rwanda. In the middle of our program deployment in 2014, our investors got cold feet as the carbon credit markets collapsed. Within weeks, we had nearly a thousand employees working without pay in 7,500 villages. To ensure the program’s survival and honor our stakeholders' trust, I worked relentlessly over the next nine months travelling between Rwanda, the EU and the US every month to sustain the program’s impact, regain investor confidence, repay lost wages, and expand our program. I led this while my mother was ill with terminal brain cancer, and we were caring for her. The combination of these barriers, stressors and uncertainties at times seemed insurmountable, and yet the continual effort resulted in dramatic health impacts in Rwanda, and financial sustainability of the company.

I developed DRIP through bringing together a wide variety of stakeholders. I identified the opportunity for cost effective drought resilience, and recruited the support of all the stakeholders including the Millenium Water Alliance, NASA, USAID, the Famine Early Warning System, the Kenya National Drought Management Authority, and the Ethiopia Ministry of Water, Irrigation and Energy toward a common theory of change and vision across these disparate stakeholders. 

My career is focused on innovating the role of engineers in global poverty reduction, and supporting students and professionals from low and middle income countries in elevating their voices and impact. In 2018, I was named the Mortenson Endowed Chair in Global Engineering at 35, an honor normally reserved for senior faculty. In the past two years, I have recruited graduate students from Rwanda, Kenya, the Congo, and Nepal, and secured over $11M in funding. I have developed the concept of Global Engineering, am the lead editor of the UNESCO Engineering Report for 2020, “Engineering the Sustainable Development Goals”, have written a book entitled “The Global Engineers”, and currently am running projects in Rwanda, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, supporting 10 PhD students, and 40 staff.

DRIP is a consortium-based project led by The Mortenson Center in Global Engineering (MCGE) at the University of Colorado - Boulder, and Millennium Water Alliance (MWA). MCGE combines education, research, and partnerships to positively impact vulnerable people and their environment by improving development tools and practice. Our vision is a world where everyone has safe water, sanitation, energy, food, shelter, and infrastructure. MWA is an alliance of leading organizations and enterprises working to bring safe drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene to millions of people in poor communities in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Additional consortium details follow below.

DRIP is a suite of novel inventions addressing water and food security through in-situ and remote monitoring, sophisticated modeling and forecasting, toward scalable impact-oriented decision aids, combining the best in technology development, data science and sector expertise. It supports an enabling environment to proactively ensure that water access is maintained during droughts. DRIP will empower institutions and communities to take coordinated actions that maintain safe water availability during drought conditions. 

Our one-of-a-kind, comprehensive systems design approach enables drought-prone communities to become effective managers in the prevention of humanitarian crises. We will replace expensive short-term response measures like water trucking, with a focused framework for proactive and sustainable drought resilience, utilizing pay-for-performance contracting to ensure that all institutions and partners are incentivized to maintain water asset management and year-round safe water supplies.

Currently implemented in Kenya, and Ethiopia, the DRIP framework for groundwater monitoring and drought emergency prevention has proven effective across our case studies: 

• Reducing drought emergencies in the Horn of Africa;

• Quantifying increased groundwater demand from prolonged drought in the East African Rift Valley;

• Improved Drought Resilience Through Continuous Water Service Monitoring and Specialized Institutions—A Longitudinal Analysis of Water Service Delivery Across Motorized Boreholes in Northern Kenya.

Our existing USAID-supported Sustainable WASH Systems Learning Partnership focuses on systems strengthening in the region, and our extensive sensor-based monitoring platforms in the region position us with tools and expertise to apply DRIP successfully. The pieces are in place, but bold funding is required to reach scale and impact.

Our theory of change posits improved drought indicator and water system functionality monitoring produces actionable forecasts and water service gap identification. With local communities and institutions responsible for water service delivery, these tools empower communities, governments and international organizations to ensure safe water availability regardless of rainfall, ending costly and unsafe drought emergencies.

Inputs include our consortium and Horn of Africa partnerships, and financial support to implement DRIP. Activities include facilitation of stakeholder consensus on essential barriers to water security; development and deployment of monitoring tools for water access and drought forecasting; and introduction and scaling of performance-based contracting for water system management (creating incentives for sustainability). Enablers include our long-standing relationships and established trust with local and national government and civil society entities in these geographies.

Intermediate outcomes include direct measurement of performance through innovative impact evaluation methods, aiming to replace costly, reactive emergency relief with proactive, cost effective guarantee of water services.

We will use our localized drought forecasts to identify and prioritize strategically selected groundwater borehole systems to ensure water delivery during dry and drought seasons. At full-scale funding, our primary impact is guaranteed year-round safe water services at approximately 4,000 strategic borehole locations across the region serving approximately 20 million people.

Directly monitored and evaluated outcomes include:

• Improved localized drought forecasts - generating localized drought forecasting to enable prioritization of resilience measures, validated through local response measures.
• Improved groundwater borehole systems functionality - identifying water system functionality, enabling proactive operation, maintenance and repair of drought response infrastructure in advance of drought periods, measured through collected field data and surveys.
• Safe water quality at sites used for drinking water consumption. We will deploy regular water quality testing services.
• Increased stakeholder coordination - sustainable service delivery is predicated upon healthy and resilient organizations acting in coordination and adapting to changing socio-environmental conditions, measured using network mapping tools, surveys and interviews to track improvements in coordination and understanding.
• Water truck pre-positioning - supporting localized water trucking demand forecasting, based on surface water availability, groundwater system functionality and population concentrations, measured through procurement records and community surveys.

We are currently monitoring the water supplies of 3 million people in arid Kenya and Ethiopia using satellite connected sensors, improving water services and drought resilience by linking this data to regional water service providers and national policy makers, and evaluating impact in Kenya and Ethiopia focused on improving water access during extreme drought. 

Over the coming year, we are focused on translating our water monitoring and data development to enhance water provisioning services for the 3 million people we currently serve in Kenya and Ethiopia. This data will be used as a decision aid in both identifying critical water sites prone to heavy reliance during periods of drought, and prioritizing proactive site infrastructure improvements and maintenance to guarantee reliable communal water sources.

Simultaneously, we will continue our work in establishing our incentive-based water provisioning financial management of DRIP. Sustainability financial planning of our solution is paramount to its success, and as described in our Theory of Change, the next step is to integrate accountable and cost-effective contracting systems that ensure the prioritization of functional water pumps and increased runtime, placing value directly on the functionality of water sites.

In five years, with adequate funding and scaling, we then anticipate our primary impact goals to be reached, expanding to guarantee year-round safe water services at approximately 4,000 strategic borehole locations across the region serving approximately 20 million people.

Mentioned above, within the next year we plan to translate our sensor and data management platform to reinforce decision-making and proactive water pump maintenance at strategic sites, bolstered by pay-for-performance contracting and increased government investment in our local DRIP initiative.

In five years,  we hope to successfully demonstrate that DRIP provides a more cost-effective, resilient, regionally appropriate and scalable solution to drought emergencies than expensive and temporary humanitarian relief. We will:

• Address acute stress of a lack of water and achieve guaranteed year round water services; enabled by our sustainable water systems delivery, land planning and agronomic advising, and our deep connections with local and regional governments.

Beyond five years, we hope to:

• Scale and sustain DRIP with local, regional, national and international resilience and relief budgetary sources.

• Enable stability and resiliency within rural communities in which the successful management of water, livestock, and crops becomes the foundation for a more stable and peaceful path to resilient rural communities.

Our strategy is to leverage systems understanding with technical and policy expertise to adapt to this changing and dynamic interplay. In this way, we can turn drought into a manageable condition which can be sustainably planned for, managed, and mitigated by the communities and countries which have the most at stake.

1. Adequate funding to reach DRIP’s full scale potential is an identified barrier.

2. We recognize the inherent challenge in coordinating large and diverse partnerships, as is central to DRIP’s operation. 

3. Our team also recognizes the barriers to, and importance of supporting locally-identified needs. 

4. We also understand the risk in research data ownership and dissemination. DRIP relies on accessing and sharing data currently owned by various stakeholders. 

5. Finally, we recognize the risk of security and stability, as we operate in fragile environments.

1. The DRIP platform can be implemented at a variety of scales across water districts, counties, and regions, responsive to unique funding opportunities and local partnerships and infrastructure to support its implementation.
2. We will address the challenge of coordinating this large partnership by leveraging our core partner, the Millennium Water Alliance, who has a track record of success in coordinating diverse partners. In our ongoing and directly related Sustainable WASH project, we have experience coordinating across four countries. This breadth of  knowledge and experience informs our design and will help us manage a partnership with inherent coordination risks.
3. Our strategy to address the challenge of supporting locally identified needs is to proactively engage with stakeholders - including government, non-profit, private sector, and international donors (for example, UNICEF who are prominently engaged in drought relief) early so that DRIP is viewed as an enabling resource. 
4. In order to address the barrier of data ownership and dissemination, DRIP has obtained preliminary permission to use data described for this work, and no limitations are anticipated.
5. To mitigate the risk of security and stability, we have selected partners with experience in identifying and navigating security constraints.

As mentioned above, our team includes University of Colorado Boulder’s (UCB) Mortenson Center in Global Engineering (MCGE), leading the scaling and implementation of DRIP’s technical and systems tools. Our team includes existing expertise in systems science, climatology, groundwater sustainability and monitoring, and drought resilience building, including partnership with the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), the United States National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS), and the Partnership for Resilience and Preparedness.

Our core team also includes the Millennium Water Alliance and its members, coordinating with the regional governments of Afar, Somali and Oromia (Ethiopia), the Somaliland State (Somalia), and Garissa, Isiolo, Wajir, Turkana and Marsabit Counties (Kenya) as partners in our effort. We will also work with our national level partnerships with the Ethiopian Ministry of Water, Irrigation and Energy, the Somaliland State Ministry of Water Resources Development and the Kenya National Drought Management Authority.

Additional DRIP Partners include: USAID Sustainable Wash Systems Learning Partnership, The Sustainability Innovation Lab at Colorado (SILC), Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for Development, Famine Early Warning Systems Network.

Key beneficiaries

• Local water utility managers

• Local communities that depend on reliable access to groundwater resources  

  Regions - (current) Kenya: Isiolo - Meru North District, Turkana, Marsabit - Moyale District; Ethiopia: Afar Region - Administrative Zone 3, Somali Region - Dire Dawa Zone,  (future) Oromia Region - East Harerghe Zone, Somalia: Gobolka Awdal - Diila District

Key deliverables

• Operational DRIP Platform 

  • Cloud-based sensor system connected to water pumps enables real-time data reporting to shared database which relays function status of pump.

  • Information is utilized by local water utility managers to assign site visits for rapid maintenance and repair to ensure functioning water pumps.

  • Platform and pump functionality is driven by donor and government-based pay-for-performance financial backing to incentivize the maintenance of functional water pumps.

Value and Impact

• Consistently operational borehole repair services and stronger local, regional and national networks.

• Demonstrated year-round water access and regional water security fully conducted, coordinated, funded, and maintained by local, regional and national governments.

Enabling Resources

• Invested Partners (see prior described partnerships)

• Coordinated Funding

  • Concentrated efforts across our partnerships are supported by common-goal, common-activity funding that enables this work.

• Local Government Support

• Sustained Donor-based Financial Backing (pay to perform)

DRIP is enabled by our funding partners USAID, NSF, and NASA, and relies on future pay-for-performance incentive models for water system operation and maintenance to improve cost effective water security in East Africa. A combination of taxes, tariffs and transfers, deployed using innovative, accountable and cost effective contracting mechanisms, can improve water service delivery.

The DRIP theory of change includes performance-based financial incentives to support the prioritization of cost-effective and proactive water pump management. While not yet deployed at scale, several promising examples are currently deployed in Kenya. These include the Proof of Impact platform, currently creating funding incentives to support water system operations in Turkana, Kenya as part of Kenya RAPID, the Swiss Development Corporation direct county transfer program and the FundiFix hand pump maintenance program that is supported by sensor-triggered repairs paid for through the Water Services Maintenance Trust Fund. These demonstrations, if successful, should support monitored-performance based payments at greater scale.

US Agency for International Development - $15.3 million cooperative agreement, 2016 - 2021

• CU Boulder-led Sustainable WASH Systems Learning Partnership, studying water and sanitation services in Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda and Cambodia. This funding does not overlap with proposed work, but instead forms the strong base upon which we will launch this project.

US Agency for International Development and Swiss Agency for Development - $35.3 million cooperative agreement, 2015 - 2020 

• This funding is for the MWA-led Kenya Resilient Arid Lands Partnership for Integrated Development, focused in northern Kenya. This funding does not overlap with proposed work, but instead forms the strong base upon which we will launch this project.

National Science Foundation - $1.125 million grant, 2016 - 2020

• This funding is to develop the borehole sensor technologies deployed.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) - $660,000, 2020-2023

• Membership in the NASA and USAID Applied Sciences Team, presently developing the technical drought and groundwater forecast tools used to support the DRIP decision support services. 

Moore Foundation -  $750,000 award, 2020 - 2022

• This funding does not overlap with proposed work directly in the Horn of Africa, but is relevant is focusing on expansion of the DRIP platform into drought-prone regions of the Western US.

DRIP seeks additional funding to bring our concept to scale, across Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia. Current funding opportunities we are in the running for includes the MacArthur 100&Change Grant -  $100 million, Spring 2021 (Top 100 candidate).

We aim to expand this work to its full potential throughout East Africa over the next five years to reach 20 million people, ensuring safe, reliable water during times of drought. At present, we serve 3 million people across Kenya and Ethiopia. Given the Elevate Prize award, we propose to scale DRIP operations within Kenya and Ethiopia, incorporating expenses:

• Labor includes salary and fringe benefits to support my work and that of one graduate student.
  • Labor - Senior Personnel - $26,529
  • Labor - Graduate Research Assistant - $32,371
  • Labor - Fringe Benefits - $11,647

Total Labor $70,547

• Travel includes expenses for 2 persons to travel to direct, facilitate, and assist in sensor installation, platform integration, and water site maintenance response.

Travel $15,528

• Materials & Supplies includes costs of 100 sensor kits via partner SweetSense, used to monitor groundwater pump functionality at strategic water sites.

Materials & Supplies $100,000

• Subawards include subcontracting expenses to enable field project management via in-country partners.

Subawards $50,000

• Tuition costs for one graduate student. 

Tuition $15,545

• Indirect Costs for institutional support expenses.

Indirect Costs -  CU Boulder $48,380

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Total Expenses - $300,000

One of the key barriers the DRIP initiative seeks to overcome is obtaining adequate funding to reach DRIP’s full scale potential. Since the DRIP platform can be implemented at a variety of scales across water districts, counties, and regions, it can be responsive to unique funding opportunities and local partnerships and infrastructure to support its implementation. 

At the $300,000 funding level, the Elevate Prize will enable DRIP to expand its reach in translating monitoring, maintenance, and data development to enhance water provisioning services for the 3 million people we currently serve in Kenya and Ethiopia. We will develop decision aids using our infrastructure to  identify critical water sites prone to heavy reliance during periods of drought, and prioritize proactive site infrastructure improvements and maintenance to guarantee reliable communal water sources.

Mentioned above, we will simultaneously work to establish our incentive-based water provisioning financial management of DRIP. With sustainability financial planning as a core enabling factor of our novel solution to ending drought emergencies, and as described in our Theory of Change, the next step is to integrate accountable and cost-effective contracting systems that ensure the prioritization of functional water pumps and increased runtime to ensure water security in the Horn of Africa.

With continued fundraising, the DRIP Initiative is on a pathway to scale its efforts in ending drought emergencies and providing reliable and safe water with a robust global partnership at every stage of its operation. This work would additionally benefit from the support of The Elevate Prize's professional expertise in tailored media and marketing campaign aimed to amplify our work.

One of DRIP’s key goals is to continue our service delivery expansion to reach a large audience, and provide lasting change to improve water security in East Africa. This work is not possible without the support of our partner organizations in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia, including government and water district partners, Millennium Water Alliance Country offices, RCMRD, FEWSNET, NASA-SERVIR and SweetSense. As a multi-partner collective advancing the goals of the DRIP initiative, our collaborators are engaged in advancing the project at every level, from platform design and adaptation to local servicing, to data synthesis, sensor installation, pump repair, and pay-for-performance contracting. 

While DRIP has been implemented at a diversity of stages in arid regions of Kenya and Ethiopia, our ability to maintain momentum, and expand into regions that will benefit from our work relies heavily on our partners in-country and abroad.