Whenever I’m asked my impressions about India, one of the things I always remark on is the sense of optimism that permeates the culture. I love hearing people talk about how their lives, the lives of their neighbors, and the state of the entire country is improving year after year. They believe their ventures will scale and they see the movement of social enterprise taking off all around them.

In the past, I’ve had a harder time finding that same optimism in Kenya. Especially since the elections, people have seemed skeptical of lasting change. They saw that in a few days, so much progress could be destroyed.

I’ve been thrilled to spend time this week with four amazing organizations - groups piloting projects to increase access to clean drinking water in low-income communities. When talking about their projects, they speak with such conviction and hope about the impact their work will have.

Umande Trust and Maji na Ufanisi are community based organizations working in the informal settlements. They are deeply embedded with the community members and are working with them to start businesses to sell and deliver water. The communities have been integral in the design of the pilots and are now owning them and taking them on as their own. They are excited both to serve their communities and to have an additional source of income. They see these pilot sites as just the first in a larger initiative.

PureFlow and Kentainers are private-sector companies that make water filters and storage tanks, respectively. They are both developing water kiosks in peri-urban areas to sell bottled water quality branded drinking water for a fraction of the price. They are run by ambitious entrepreneurs, for whom scale is a given. They believe they can both serve low-income markets and make a profit, and won’t stop working until they do.

The progress these organizations have made in the past four months (from initial conception of the idea through the pilot phase) is incredible. They’re moving fast, proving their models, and truly serving the needs of their customers. And, they are right to be optimistic about what the future will bring.

As we near the end of the Ripple Effect pilots in Kenya, we are coming together to celebrate the work done by all to make these pilots a success.  Congratulations everyone!

As the Kenyan pilots move forward, word is spreading! Here are two recent articles in the Kenyan media.

• Business Daily: Plan for clean water to slums kicks off
• The Standard: Acumen Fund partners with Bill Gates to water the poor

You can link to other articles about Ripple Effect from our press page.

Hosting a workshop on delivery business, with Maji Na Ufanisi and the Sisal Youth Group in Mukuru.

We’re currently at week 7 out of 16 of the Kenya pilot phase, and the pilots are roaring along! The IDEO team has been working with the Awardees in Nairobi for the past 2 weeks, and the Acumen team will visit Nairobi in December. Here are some updates from the field.

Kentainers, whose philosophy is to get into the market quickly and start learning, is almost ready to build their first water kiosk. They have created a brand called Zing, which will sell aspirational high quality water. They have constructed a prototype kiosk using a prefabricated panel system which they developed for their sanitation business, and large stickers for branding and messaging. At the kiosk, people will be able to clean their containers, fill them with Zing drinking water, and also purchase unbranded general use water. Kentainers is developing a new, iconic water container which they can manufacture in-house. While the Ripple Effect team has been here, our collaboration has focused on branding, the container design, and the service model for the water kiosk. We delved into the designs through brainstorms, sketching, and prototyping.

Maji Na Ufanisi has partnered with Kenyatta University to host their student design competition: designing a new handcart for women, and mkokotene cart for youth delivery businesses. To kick off the design competition Maji na Ufanisi hosted a great day of learning for all the participating students in the informal settlements Mukuru and Kibera. The students had the opportunity to interview the Sisal youth group which will use the carts, a business owner who currently rents carts, the Jua Kali artisans who fabricate carts and other metalwork, and the Soweto youth group which runs a successful cart fabrication business. Both the students and the youth group were very engaged in meaty discussions about cart usage, materials, and cost. The students have 2 weeks to complete models and designs, and we’ve encouraged them to continually get feedback along the way. The top 6 designs will be fabricated and passed along to the Sisal youth group for testing. In the meantime, the Ripple Effect team also hosted a workshop with the Sisal youth group to develop new businesses opportunities for the carts. The group is most excited about water delivery and garbage collection (in separate carts, of course) because they’ll make the most money for the group. Maji will be hosting leadership training and additional business coaching for the group in the weeks ahead.

Umande is working with the community to provide Maji Safi Mita Sitini - Safe water, 60 meters. With the Bidii Yetu community group in Kibera they are building a water kiosk, which will provide water to everyone within a 60-meter radius. There will be delivery to plots of homes within the 60m through a network of fixed and flexible pipes. They have started with strong community mobilization, forming groups to look at business management, customer relations, operations and more. They have worked closely with the Bidii Yetu group to make each decision, often over the course of several meetings. They laid the foundation for the kiosk last week, and it will be complete in about a month. While we were working with them, one exercise we did was to lay out the space of the kiosk using tape on the ground; we marked out the outer boundaries of the space and then experimented with different layouts, prompting discussion and decisions about how and what could fit in a 3m x 3m building. We also built upon many discussions from our previous trip: developing messaging, payment options, many details of the delivery model, and kiosk design.

PureFlow will soon be opening a new water kiosk in a peri-urban settlement in the Western edge of Nairobi, near Kangemi. Unlike PureFlow’s other water kiosks, this one will be company-owned and branded, with an integrated water delivery service. PureFlow has selected the site and secured a water source, created site refurbishment plans, started community mobilization, and laid the groundwork for the new business. The Ripple Effect team worked with PureFlow on the myriad details of the plan – water pricing, the customer experience of visiting the kiosk, the operations and physical layout of the kiosk, the brand, the messaging. We all went out to the field for an afternoon of field research, asking questions about current water sources and what people would like to see in the future. We learned that in the target area, there is little competition in terms of treated water and delivery, and there’s a great desire for new options; we also learned about people’s preference for a water container that looks BIG, and other preferences around handling. PureFlow will conduct an in-depth survey to understand the market more deeply.

It’s an exciting time. Everybody is making decisions, narrowing in, and laying the groundwork for their businesses. Stay tuned for a host of new options, for affordable safe water in Nairobi!

The pilots have begun!  It’s been a short time since the pilots started and the Awardees have been hard at work bringing their ideas to life.  The celebrate their progress, we invited the organizations to a social gathering to share their pilot ideas and get to know each other better.

While IDEO, Acumen, and GSBI have been working closely across the Awardees, this was the first time the organizations shared their concepts with one another.  As each pilot was described, the other organizations listened intently and asked thoughtful questions around community mobilization, scalability of the pilot, and even suggested ideas for sustainable business models. The evening provided a chance to discuss common problems, share new learnings, and even a bit of friendly competition.

Some of the questions they asked each other included:
How will you organize the community?
Who is your target?
What’s the water source?
How will carts geared towards women fit with the overall business model?
What’s your strategy for making the business sustainable?

My favorite quote from the evening summed up the overall perspective, “Teach
them how to save.  Teach them how to make a water point viable. If they
fail, we have failed.”

As we near the launch date for the pilots, each of the Ripple Effect organizations has quickly switched to implementation mode. They’re in the thick of working through tactical details, and we’ve been a part of moving from strategy to getting real over the last few weeks. All of the solutions have their own unique kinks to address, but one fundamental issue is always the same.

Where will we actually get the water?

I naively assumed finding water was the big challenge to contend with in Kenya, but that’s not nearly the whole problem. What I’ve learned is that the true tough stuff is not where to find water, but how to ultimately secure it as a source (a question the head of one organization begrudgingly describes as his real nightmare.) All 4 of the Ripple pilots have solid plans to get water - from a borehole, various municipal line, the river.  But the best laid plans only go so far when you’re dealing with the realities of government corruption and unexpected activities in the middle of the night.

The offering we’re working to create is consistent drinking water, available and affordable everyday. A kiosk’s supply mysteriously disappearing overnight is not an option, nor is paying a hefty bribe just to remain open. The exercise of planning for risks is like none I’ve ever experienced and we’ve learned there is absolutely no room for naïve business in Nairobi. Each Ripple organization is developing a plan A, a plan B, a plan C, a plan D… knowing full well they’ll have to adjust as things change. Makes creating demand and beating competition seem like the easy part.

Ripple Effect India video. Click to view.

We now have a video which tells the story of the Ripple Effect in India. It’s a 7-minute video describing the project and featuring the 5 Awardee organizations - Jal Bhagirathi, Naandi, Piramal, WaterHealth India, and WSUP. We hope you all enjoy this!

Many thanks to Quicksand, the Indian filmmaker that produced this video.

What do we mean when we talk about Ripple Effect coaching? We’ve told a lot of stories on this blog, but now I’ll get specific about the types of support the Acumen Fund and IDEO teams have provided in the last 2 weeks.

Customer Journey - mapping the experience of purchasing water from a kiosk or receiving water delivery from the customer perspective. This breaks down a complex offering into a set of tangible elements. We can then focus on each area of the journey to ensure a well-designed experience for the customer. An example journey might be:

• Become aware of the offering
• Go to the kiosk with jerry can
• Pay for water
• Clean jerry can
• Fill jerry can
• Carry water home
• Empty jerry can into large storage
• Return to kiosk

Brainstorming - generating dozens of ideas on specific topics, such as how to create awareness, types of payment methods, incentives to purchase water.

Prototyping - creating a quick and simple model of a product, service, or business model. For example, with Umande we brought a 38-meter length of flexible hose pipe to the settlement and mocked up a delivery route moving the flexible pipe around, as test of how their delivery might work.

Risk analysis - identifying the risks of the pilot, and brainstorming solutions or mitigations for each risk.

Income statement - discussing the sources of revenue and of income, and working through income statements and cash flow statements.

Activities, outputs, and outcomes - discussing the activities and outputs of the pilot, and what first and second order outcomes follow from these.

Schedule and responsibilities - based on the original project plans and the changes to them, mapping out the activities over the course of the pilot.

Community meeting at the water kiosk site

While most organizations speak to the importance of collaboration with local communities, Umande takes collaboration to a level I’ve never seen before.

Umande is working to develop a water kiosk and delivery model in the Kibera settlement, working closely with a community based organization (CBO) called Bidii Yetu. The motto of the project is “clean water 60 meters” and the aim is to provide safe water to every household in a 60m radius of a kiosk.  The CBO’s business will include sales of water and other services at the kiosk, and home water delivery through a network of fixed and flexible piping.

This pilot will be facilitated by Umande and executed by the CBO, which receives a loan from the Ripple Effect funds and repays it  with a portion of their profits. Since the CBO is ultimately responsible for the business, Umande wants to ensure that they are comfortable with every aspect of the design and implementation.

Umande’s first priority is to build trust and effective communication with the CBO. At the launch celebration at the kiosk site, Umande began by disclosing the full amount of the Ripple Effect funding - a level of transparency uncommon among Kenyan NGOs. Throughout our week of design and implementation strategy with Umande, community members were invited to participate. Umande also hosts regular meetings in the community where all the details of the kiosk model are discussed - pricing and delivery options, whether to have underground or overhead piping, what materials to use.  When supplies arrive, Umande presents them to the CBO with a joint signing process to transfer responsibility. Josiah from Umande led a lively song in which all of us - Umande, the CBO, and the Ripple Effect team - were reminded in turn, “Don’t sleep, wake up, there’s work to do, there’s work ahead!”

This can be a slow process: most decisions will include inputs from the CBO, community workers, finance group, and engineering group, and several discussions before coming to consensus. But the rewards of the collaborative approach are clear in the level of community ownership. Within the few days that we were with Umande this week there was a flurry of activities as the CBO members arranged for the land, government permissions, and a storage tank for their kiosk. The pilot is racing ahead!

We knew in advance that we’d be visiting community youth groups during our time with Maji na Ufanisi, but we didn’t quite know what to expect. What kind of vision would they have, and at what scale? Would MNU be seeding the idea of market-based solutions with the groups? Would it come from them?

We were delighted when we realized how much of the drive for innovation was coming from the groups themselves, and that Maji na Ufanisi’s role was one of intermediary and facilitator. The reality is that these self-organizing youth groups carry vast potential. When asked what kind of support they hoped for from MNU, at the top of their wish lists was help with finding ways to grow their emerging water businesses.

Maji na Ufanisi has tapped into a winning strategy: find bright and capable groups, give them the right kind of support, and get out of their way. This is how teams are empowered at IDEO, and we’re thrilled to see this kind of thinking alive in Nairobi!