Archimedes Project | Move the World

Lindsay Leaving!

On Friday, summer fellow Lindsay Leigh had her last day working on the Kouzin Dlo team. As a Summer Fellow with experience living and working in Haiti, Lindsay provided us with valuable insight on partnering with organizations and working with community leaders. Since our launch, Lindsay has also played a major role in branding our product through swag including aprons, bags and t-shirts printed with our logo and flyers to spread the word in communities. She also worked meticulously to create our visuals our our model for trainings and community outreach activities.

These two weeks have focused for the most part been working out operational details, with each team member focusing on their own area. We have been working on obtaining Kouzin Dlo swag (aprons, t-shirts, and totebags), reaching out to new potential partners, setting up monitoring systems, coming up with marketing plans, and more.

Moise, our International Health Policy master and go-to translator, had his last day as an Archimedes Summer Fellow was this week. Thank you so much for all of your hard work, Moise, and best of luck on your future endeavors.

We will all miss you and look forward to  working again together in the future. Kenbe la!

The team got to go on a little excursion to a town northeast of Port-au-Prince called Mirebalais this week! Our host, Charles Plaisimond of FATEM, was a wonderful guide with a lot of valuable insight. He took us to several remote schools and community centers in the area, each with its own unique water situation. One school had an effective rainwater catchment system made of PVC pipe fastened up to the corrugated metal roof on one end, and a huge concrete cistern on the other. Another school was a 15 minute hike up a mountain. Upon arrival, we learned that the only source of water for the school was the river we forged at the beginning of the hike, carried up the mountain in buckets.

In addition to the schools, we also got the treat of visiting the state-of-the-art Partners in Health Hospital in Mirebelais, where an administrator, Vanessa gave us a tour and overview of both successes and challenges they’ve encountered in their first years of operation. We also got to tour the Zanmi Agrikol nourimanba plant in Koporan, where a peanut butter product designed for children suffering from malnutrition is manufactured, as well as the neighboring agriculture and construction vocational school, CFFL is.

Thank you Charles for the wonderful adventure/learning/networking opportunity!

Monday – The team wrapped up jeran training on the fourth day. In the morning we went over stock management and accounting, and after lunch we gave out training completion certificates. We then interviewed each trainee one by one, and sent them home with a sample bottle of chlorine. Monday evening, we decided upon who we would hire for our first manager in Bwa Nef!

Tuesday – We got to take a breather and reflect a bit on training. We also started to turn our focus to some supply chain and equipment challenges including where to buy safe water storage buckets at a good price, and how to attach taps to them.

Wednesday – Our new jeran from Bwa Nef came over to base for orientation and we discussed what would happen during the upcoming entrepreneur aka “machan” training.

Thursday – We headed out to Bwa Nef again for our first day of entrepreneur/machan training. Seven ladies came as well as three supervisors from our supplier/manufacturing company. The supervisors conducted training this day and were super well organized and well-versed in the material they were presenting. They also came with songs and fun group rhythm/clapping exercises!

Friday – In collaboration with our Bwa Nef jeran, Kouzin Dlo conducted the second day of machan training. Our jeran is a natural leader and took the initiative to moderate conversation on difficult subjects such as pricing. At the end of the day, we gave the new machans training completion certificates as well as gave them the opportunity to buy their first bottles of chlorine to resell in the community.

Thanks to friends old and new for supporting our crowdfunding campaign for Community Chlorinators!

J: I have to say that I'm confused about how creating a market for what should be a public, free commodity is moving away from traditional aid strategies. This displaces the cost of clean water to destitute and vulnerable populations and actually might miss the most at-risk populations because they will be the ones who cannot pay for it and will be the hardest to reach. How will the chlorine salesmen be incentivized to reach these most at-risk when they cannot pay? From a rights perspective, the communities should be provided with free potable water to create a demand for free potable water. How might your project create a demand for free potable water?

Faith: Thanks so much for reaching out! The two communities we are working in have told us that their residents pay 20% of their income (~ what people in the US pay on rent) just for clean water even though there is a free local well. They don't use the well because the water is contaminated due to an almost universal lack of toilets.

Community Chlorinators is a low cost solution (2% of their income) that will allow them to clean the well water. This will save the households a lot of money while engaging the community to help itself.

Access to clean water is the most significant barrier to development. The Archimedes Project leverages technology, ideas and capacity to build lean, scalable water and sanitation enterprises worldwide.  1 billion people lack access to clean water. 2.5 billion lack access to sanitation. Every year, this shortfall in infrastructure causes millions of deaths, and billions of dollars in lost economic productivity.  Many organizations have attempted to solve this problem using heavy top-down approaches that ignore local capacity. We are building the next generation of water organizations. Organizations that are designed using the lessons learned and best practices from the efforts that preceded it.  We believe that leveraging existing water and sanitation technology, tested business models and local expertise, in combination with a relentless focus on scale, is the solution to water and sanitation for the world.  To that end, we collect the best technology and case studies of the most effective solutions. Using this information and a cadre of local partners, we incubate revenue generating social enterprises that will build large scale water or sanitation solutions for the bottom of the pyramid. As a co-founder, we connect that organization with partners and supporters and help then measure their impact.

This summer, we are launching Community Chlorinators in Haiti. Over the last four months, this enterprise has grown from an idea on paper to a reality that will be launched on the ground this summer. We have helped the entrepreneur design an evaluation program and get grants and fellowships including an invitation to be a commitment maker at Clinton Global Initiative University.

Haiti from Space

Join us this summer for the exciting and challenging launch of our social enterprise Community Chlorinators!

The Archimedes Project is searching for highly-qualified Fellows interested in social enterprise  to support the launch of its pilot clean water enterprise, Community Chlorinators, in Haiti this summer. Fellows will have the opportunity to help establish a  community based enterprise, support the training of local entrepreneurs and assist with our monitoring and evaluation efforts.

On the ground, Fellows will join the dedicated Community Chlorinators  team and work with our partners to train micro-entrepreneurs from the community, assist in collecting baseline and follow-up data from individual households, and host events within the community to raise awareness about the importance of clean water and Community Chlorinators’ solution.

Fellows will join in the Archimedes Project launch team in Haiti from mid-June to late-August. Prior to traveling to Haiti, each Fellow must work with the team to raise the $3,000 fellowship fee which will cover all of their travel and in-country expenses throughout the summer. The Archimedes Project is looking for Fellows with an interest in health, international development and social enterprise, prior travel and/or work experience in developing countries, and Haitian Creole or French language skills.

Quench the thirst of the world with Archimedes Project's newest social enterprise - buy one give one bacon water!

We are proud to offer this fantastic new product in conjunction with our partners! Your purchase of Archimedes Project branded Bacon Water will provide delicious and life saving bacon water to families in need across Haiti. 

Great video explaining brainswarming: A new way of generating ideas in a group using a structured graph.

via harvardbusinessreview

How many times have you been in a brainstorming session this week? Chances are the answer is, “More than I can count.” But no study has proven that brainstorming works well, even though it has been the go-to method for idea generation since 1953.