Deliberate Sustainability
Untapped projects are set up to last. Not only do the communities we serve share the cost but they are also active contributors to the project design and implementation. We’ve learned that when we empower a village to own the solution it has a much higher likelihood for sustained success. The greatest contribution we can provide a community is giving them the tools to eliminate dependence on organizations like our. In short, we get excited by working ourselves out of a job!
Here are some of the ways we achieve sustainability within our projects:
Income Generating Activities
Our Women Entrepreneurs Are Creating New Ways To Turn Our Projects Into Income-Generating Activities Every Day. A Few Examples Include:
The I Stop Traffick graduates learn how to build rainwater harvesting systems then bring these solutions back to their villages and sell them at an affordable price so their village can have safe water at their homes.
Many project leaders have built water kiosks near a new well to make affordable safe water available and easily accessible to their village eliminating the long walks to contaminated water sources.
Mixing Pure Shores with lemongrass has been popular in Uganda as an affordable cleaning solution.
Local Contribution
Every project we fund requires the recipient community to share the cost. This serves an important purpose – it gives the project value. This principle also gives the community ownership of the new solution which increases accountability well after our project has ended. The average local contribution for our projects is 23% of the total project cost.
Volunteers
Our partners recruit volunteers from the community to contribute to every step of the project. Not only does this drive engagement and excitement for the new water solution, it ensures that the project is designed to fit the unique and lasting cultural needs of that village. We average 28 community volunteers for each school-based project!
Key Stakeholders
We operate in tight collaboration with the local government health agencies. It is important that we are complementing, not competing, with our solutions to end the water crisis. This is particularly important as our efforts directly support keeping schools COVID-free.
