After the big village presentation described in the last post, we’ve been working on identifying and preparing for the next part of the project.  One of our main goals was to address the villagers’ concern that it would be unfair to implement a payment structure after building the first tanks for free.  We planned to explain that the first tanks were experimental prototypes that were a risk for the first user groups to take on.  Furthermore, the result of the prototyping process – that the structures are functional -  is valuable to R4H.  As such, the first tanks were not really cost free.  However, as we realized, this reasoning is not very effective because the villagers don’t actually see anything but working systems that were not paid for in cash by their users.  The other way that we planned to address concerns about fairness is to stress the importance of a sustainable economic model.  If we cannot develop one, then R4H will not be able to expand and benefit other users in the region.  We hoped to make it understood that we are not trying to make money off Achinakom; rather, we are trying to expand the scope of the project.

Last night, Zach, Eli, Sylas, Urmila, and I went to Achinakom for a meeting with the handful of families who had told Suma they were interested in having a system.  The meeting started with Sylas going over the payment plans again, both fixed loan payment and vending system.  Unfortunately, we realized that none of the attendees actually spend money on water during the dry season, and were only interested in a free system.  All the attendees use the municipal water source, even though it poses a slight inconvenience.  The inconvenience is not enough to justify spending money on a rainwater harvesting system.  The people at the meeting strongly resisted the idea of a payment plan.  We decided to close the meeting because they were not the target market for the system, and that it would be wrong to try to convince them to sign on to the project at a financial loss.

Apropos of yesterday’s meeting, we decided to actively target the individual families who reported in last year’s survey that they purchase vendor water during the dry season.  These are the only people for whom the program makes sense.  As our time at MGU draws to a close, we need to set things up so that R4H continues to move forward.  We are drafting a comprehensive impact report, compiling our water testing data, and creating materials to hand out to our target audience detailing the construction, operation, and payment plans for new tanks.  At this point, we are secure in our proposal and are focusing on finding people who would benefit from them.  One of the unforeseen obstacles is that the survey results that indicated a large percentage of the village purchasing water during the dry season may not be totally reliable.  Because the the eventual sustainable goals of R4H were not thoroughly communicated in the very beginning of the project, people hoped that by overstating the cost of water they would be more likely to incur charity.  Now in addition to making R4H’s goals clear to everybody, we are going through survey data and trying to find the actual best target audience.

One last exciting update is the results of our August water quality testing.  It is optimal to have less than MPN less than 900 parts per 100mL, and we are way under that limit.  Also, we tested completely negative for E. Coli.  These results make sense because it is monsoon season and rains frequently, which means pure rainwater often refreshes the tanks.  With a program of frequent water testing, we can monitor to ongoing high quality of the water in the tanks.

Results:

Community Tank:

MPN: 0.0 parts per 100mL

E. Coli: 0.0 ppm

Individual Tank:

MPN: 9.2 parts per 100 mL

E. Coli: 0.0 ppm

Yesterday was our village general body meeting.

The goal of this (very important) meeting was to make our mission and guiding principles clear to the village as a whole, and to propose a few sustainable business models we can adopt together going forward. From the start, we knew this was going to be a difficult proposition. Our messages to the villagers have been mixed and somewhat contradictory. The first constructions have been provided free of cost, and subsequent efforts over the past months to communicate the importance of a payback plan have not been sufficiently planned and marketed to the benefit of the users. It is unfortunate it took so long, but this was the opportunity to be entirely clear about our intentions, capabilities, and seriousness about implementing a pay-back model.

To this end, we enlisted the help of several senior advisors. This is a difficult balancing act in itself. Although they lend us legitimacy in the eyes of the villagers (without which we could not have come this far), it becomes much more difficult to control the message and information when it is coming from three or four different sources.

This “General Body” meeting was convened in the village with about sixty local women (an audience large enough to get the information to the bulk of the population) and ten of us from the university or otherwise affiliated with R4H. Urmila, a local Brown student, was also there, giving much-needed interpretation help to Sophie, Zach, and I. After introductions and statements from a few leaders, we heard testimonials from users of the first systems.

Sylas then presented the main information about our mission and the proposed sustainability plans to begin implementing. Although the projector lost power about halfway through, he got the bulk of the information across (the presentation, in English and Malayalam, will be posted later). The floor was then opened to questions, where a few issues became clear.

Immediately, the central issue was the unfairness in asking them to start paying when those fortunate enough to get the first systems are ensured free water. They are entirely right, of course, but unfortunately our options are limited as this point. We have no leverage over the current users, who made no commitment to pay back, so this transition will be difficult regardless. The meeting adjourned with the understanding that the current users would discuss among themselves a “fair” way to proceed, possibly beginning to pay the same rates for water we are asking from the next beneficiaries. This would be an excellent way to resolve the issue, otherwise we can only stress that the economic benefits we are presenting are appealing enough to overcome lingering concerns about equity between the different sets of users.

The actual economic merits of the plans were largely overshadowed by these systemic questions, but the central message about the possibility for cost and time savings did get across. People need a few days to actually consider how these plans would work for them, so we will hear feedback next week. I am optimistic that once the organizational issues are resolved between the villagers (a process they are very good at), we can discuss the specifics of an economic plan with one or several potential user groups.

Other miscellaneous thoughts:

• The villagers are more concerned with equity as an abstract principle than their economic self-interest. People want to feel sure that programs and procedures are being conducted in a “fair” manner before they will evaluate the merits. I am sure this is indicative of larger sociological systems at play. This makes it difficult to market our program as just another business, since their are very real concerns about community strife over water, especially when combined with the next point.
• We are operating in a difficult area between the public and private sectors. Since water supply is generally regarded as a public good, it is hard for us to gain any support as a simple “take it or leave it” business selling a product. With the notable exception of water vendors, the villagers are accustomed to water supply initiatives coming from government or charitable NGOs. In neither case are they expected to contribute more than a token amount to the works. From my perspective, we are offering an appealing alternative to current options (for 80% of households, buying water), but either the status quo is not dire enough or our benefits are not clear enough to convince them to abandon their current outlook of water supply = subsidized program.
• Communication continues to be an issue. It is not clear to me how much the process of effectively conveying a message to the villagers depends on the actual information being communicated, or the source of the message. In other words, are they evaluating propositions on their own merits or on the perceived legitimacy of the speaker. Ideally they would mix the two and ultimately decide based on merits, but I am concerned that the discussions tend too much towards the latter and they would agree to something because it seems that important people are encouraging them to do so, and not because they can directly see the benefits themselves. To make this program a successful enterprise, above all the customers must adopt it because they know it is in their interest to do so.

It has been mostly business over here. We have been wrestling with excel in an attempt to pin down the actual numbers behind the payback plan.  We are all beginning to wish we had kidnapped some business and economics majors from Brown and stuffed them in our suitcases, but nonetheless we are making progress.

The vision of Rainwater for Humanity is to provide cleaner and cheaper water to the region of Kuttanad, and we are designing the payback structure accordingly. On average each family spends 360 rupees (8 dollars) per month on water from private vendors during the dry season. We have decided that Rainwater for Humanity will fund the construction for the new tanks and the users will pay around 300 rupees per month during usage until the cost for the tank has been paid back. We currently estimate this payback length to about 6 years, a number we would love to see whited-out and changed to 3, but 6 is better than we previously speculated. So each family saves around 60 rupees a month. This is not a huge amount of, however, as the users payback they are not only saving money but they are benefiting from convenience and better health (which can save medical costs). And of course after the tank is paid back the water is free.

This means several things for Rainwater for Humanity as an organization. Mainly, we have to find a target cost for the tanks that is feasible yet affordable. The payback plan is set up so that the users only payback up to this target cost (i.e. we don’t charge them extra if things don’t go according to plan). The community tank (120,000 L) that is currently being used cost around 240,000 rupees ($ 5100 split between 19 families). This cost was about 30% higher than the projected cost, because of numerous problems that arose during construction. Over the next week, we plan on looking over the budget and construction details to find a projected cost that we believe is feasible to reach after a number of tanks have been constructed. Until we successfully construct a tank with this target cost, Rainwater for Humanity will be losing money. But this is a challenge we are ready to combat with persistence and innovation. An idea was even proposed to use compressed vegetable fibers as panels for the tank. Some of the professors here showed us a helmet that had been made out of local vegetation, and it was quite remarkable.

Reaching this target cost also means we must better understand water usage in Achinakom so that the harvesting structures can supply a sufficient amount of rainwater while also conserving size, and thus cost.  The survey shows that each family uses 50 L a day of vendor water during dry season, however the families using the tank currently are only using 20 L a day, and they are confusingly reporting that they are happier when using this lesser amount. WHO standards state that 8 L of water a day per person which would lend itself to about 35 L a day per family. So it looks as if we have to conduct some further “market research,” as Eli so aptly named it.

Yesterday we spent almost a full day in Achinakom. We ran several different chemical tests on the water in the community tank, and found that it is now much cleaner than it was during its first period of usage. We took samples from the community tank and the family tank to run fecal coliform and E coli tests. The fecal coliform tests give us an idea of how contaminated the water is, however, not all fecal coliforms are dangerous to humans. It is the E coli test that is the most important because the presence of E coli in the water sample indicates that there are indeed the dangerous fecal coliforms. The villagers boil all their water before cooking and drinking which removes 99.9% of all of the bacteria, but disease is still prevalent suggesting that even with the practice of boiling, unclean water means poor health. Sylas speculates that the community tank water is most likely cleaner, because the family tank water is collected from roofs. And as we saw in Achinakom roofs are one of the premier hang out spots for animals such as chickens, rats, and birds. However, the community tank is not near any houses and therefore is populated by virtually no warm blooded animals.

We remain in suspense as the incubator takes its sweet time. In 24 hours we will look at the samples with either disappointment or elation.

On a personal note, I am so happy to finally reach the point in my life where I am not using math and science to complete problem sets but instead applying it to real life. Yesterday Eli and I looked at the geometry of the community tank and re-measured some of its dimensions to confirm its reported volume. I now feel confident I could walk into any 9^th grade geometry classroom and definitively answer the age old question of “When am I every going to use this?” I can finally call on the manicured hands of gum smacking texters, peer into the souls of the drooling desk vandalizers and blank staring penis scribblers who deep down truly don’t believe they ever need to know how to find the volume of a tapered trapezoidal prism. I can finally say yes. Yes this stuff is important. Yes this stuff is cool. You can do incredible things with the knowledge you learn from one math class or chemistry lab.

So after many hours in the classroom it’s safe to say things are starting to pay off, and it is a wonderful feeling.

And lastly, we had our Leadership team meeting today.We met with Dr. Thomas, Dr. Ramasamy, and Sali a powerful political voice in Achinakom. We clarified Rainwater for Humanity’s vision of sustainability and talked about a payback plan. Things seemed to go well after we were de-briefed by Sylas following the meeting. The word “subsidize” was thrown around a bit too much for our comfort, but Sali explained that it is the mentality of the people, and it is a challenge we will face when explaining our vision for economic sustainability. The meeting reaffirmed how hard it can be to push an agenda when so much is lost in translation, but we remain optimistic. Saturday we will go to the village and give a presentation explaining our proposal. The outcome of this presentation will define the actions of Rainwater for Humanity over the next several years.

Stay tuned for updates as we prep for the meeting Saturday.

It is July 30th, very bright and warm out without the usual rain showers. Today, Zach and I are visiting Achinakom for the first time. Eli is feeling better and tested negative for malaria (woo!) and he’s going to spend the day resting.

Plan for the visit:

Zach and I are going to check up on the existing structures and take samples for water quality tests. Sylas will be with us to guide us, translate, and help interpret what we find in Achinakom. Hopefully we will get a better idea of how things work in the village. Just today, we learned that there is a committee of 19 community tank families who pay 20R per month to the family that owns the land that the tank is on. This is good news – we realize that it could help us promote a community payback plan.

—EDIT–

It is now the evening of July 30th. The trip to Achinakom was a great success. Zach and I were surprised to realize how difficult it is to visualize the village without ever having been there. Even though we’ve been working on this project for the whole year, visiting the village instantly crystallized things for us that would have taken forever to understand. Seeing the community tank was exciting (it really exists! really!) and we assessed that it is indeed filling up on schedule. It’s not being used right now because it is the rainy season, and families can obtain their own rainwater on a day-by-day basis by simply hanging a bucket out their kitchen window. The whole tank is filling up with clear, sweet-smelling water that we took a look at by lifting up the corrugated roof. There are some crumbling bits of masonry, but Tenguchen the mason is coming in this week to fix them. The first-flush sand filter that the water passes through before going into the tank seems to be doing its job properly. We watched the president of the community tank association scoop out some leaves that were stuck on the mesh. There was quite a bit of debris on the corrugated roof, and it turns out that maintenance is only performed once per week. Maintenance is paid for by the dues that the users pay to the landowners. These dues are actually 10R per month, not 20. They only pay during the dry months – that is, 4 months of the year. The total revenue is 800R. 350R goes to the landowners as a simple usage fee. The remaining 450R goes towards maintenance. That all sounds good, except for one weakness. If some maintenance beyond routine cleaning is needed, 450R is nowhere near enough to cover it. The mason’s fee is 450R per day. Because the tank is relatively new, this problem has never been tested. It remains to be seen how larger expenses will be dealt with.

What we most importantly took away from the visit was the idea that the users seem to be happy with the community tank arrangement – because it is very cheap!  This means that our next task is to figure out a way to promote a payment plan.  In order for the harvesters to proliferate sustainably, we need the users to propel the project themselves.

On a non-work related note, Zach and I had a lovely visit to Lake Vembanad on the way back from Achinakom.  We stopped at a Christian shrine on the shore and watched the sun go low behind the clouds over the huge grey expanse.  A couple of fishermen poled their canoe-like crafts over a tangle of water weeds and into the open water to cast their nets.  They will go retrieve them in the early morning with hopes of catching a small flat round fish that sells expensively for 100R each – that is slightly over $2.  Beautiful wicker houseboats crisscross the water, carrying tourists from around the world (according to Sylas, Britney Spears celebrated the New Year on Lake Vembanad).  Fish eagles and crows circled around on the cool breeze.

The day started at 6:30 with knocks on our doors. It was the housekeeper with a cup of tea. Eli says that he has gained no ground in the past week communicating to the housekeeper that 6:30 is quite early and that he would rather go tea-less. So as it seems, morning tea will be a daily ritual.
Around 10:00 Sophie and I met up and headed to the office. Eli was not feeling well so he stayed in saying he would meet up with us later. When we went back for lunch he said he was feeling a little better, but he wanted to go to the local hospital to get tested for Malaria because he showed some of the symptoms. The University doctor said it is very unlikely that he could have contracted Malaria in the small window while he was in Bombay without the medication but Eli wants to be positive. So Sophie and I worked today without him while he and Sylas went to the local hospital.
We began looking over the survey results compiled by Christina and talked with Dr. John about our conclusions. There seems to be unanimous desire for rainwater as the main source of drinking and cooking water in Achinakom for community health reasons. The survey showed that 11 percent of the villagers have contracted either jaundice or dysentery in the past 5 years. Sickness is not only a health problem but an economic one as well due to losing work days and spending on average 3000 rupees (65$, about three weeks pay) per illness. In addition to medical costs, each family spends on average of 8 percent of their income on water from private water vendors during the summer season. Compare this percentage to the 7 percent the average American spends on all of their utilities and gasoline.

Tomorrow we plan on traveling to Achinakom with Sylas and filling some holes in the survey data, as well as finding the community’s opinion on whether to build the tanks for individual users or some defined user group. Hopefully Eli will be feeling better and can accompany us there. If not, it will be a challenging experience for Sophie and me with the little experience we have.

Tonight, we plan on trying out some basic Malayalam phrases with workers in the guest house. Hopefully we can at least be proficient enough in saying “hello” and “thank you” by the time we reach Achinakom tomorrow.

Greetings: I’m reporting to you from the non-work side of things.

There is nothing like a good fifteen-minute adrenaline rush to cure jet lag.  Here in the Mahatma Gandhi University guesthouse, current human population about ten, there is also a teeming underworld of insects with homo sapien egos.  Even after I dislodged the finger-length-legged carcass of a spider from my curtains this morning and let it lay on the floor to discourage new intruders, one of its brethren decided to make an evening incursion near my closet.  It lurked behind the cloth at the closet door, legs insolently peeking out.  I poised in a hunting stance, ready to pounce, Crime and Punishment in hand.  SLAM.  Failure seemed impossible.  But lo – I cautiously wiggled back the cloth hoping to see a flattened spider-shaped piece of wallpaper, and was met with the unnerving spectacle of only two disembodied legs attached to the wall.  Frantic search ensued, but the newly six-legged spider is missing as of yet.  Resigning myself to this unfortunate reality, I went on a photo safari of the various electrical oddities of my room.  While capturing the elusive “only plug that actually fits the Indian adaptor,” whose logical habitat is behind the bathroom mirror on a fuse switch (see photo), I caught sight of a large shiny cockroach on the bathroom door (see photo).  Having told Eli earlier that I find cockroaches cute, I felt compelled to act with chivalry.  He is currently still a resident of my bathroom.  I think we can learn to live in peace.

India is, so far, a peaceful place.  Our smooth journey came to a close when Zach and I arrived at 3:45 a.m. to a queerly silent Cochin International Airport.  Hordes of people swarmed through the mildewed halls in a quiet cloth rustle.  We floated in a daze of alert exhaustion.

When we entered a large and bright immigration hall, the millionth helpful man of our journey motioned us to a side exit.  As hundreds of people lined up to get stamped, Zach and I moseyed unhindered out to the baggage claim, found our things, and then stepped into the hot humid night.  Indian faces crowded around the exit – a sea of unfamiliarity buoyed by moisture and darkness.  Then, a flash of recognition.  “Soloway and Ballard,” read the cab driver’s sign.  Our names, without a single further word of explanation from the Malayalam driver, were enough to bear us into the night.  We twisted through rumpled asphalt thoroughfares crowded even in the darkness with walkers and cyclists, lined with brightly shuttered storefronts.  Two hours later, we pulled through the giant gates that read “Mahatma Gandhi University,” that last word hard to believe in the early dawn jungle.  But wait – and up the drive, the university took on form.  A concrete monolith rose from banana fronds; “Computer Science Department.”  Rubber trees lined the hummock around the blue “Behavioral Science Department.”  Then, Guest House.  Then, meeting Eli; like our names on the placard, a bolt of familiarity.  Then, shower.  Then, first spider encounter.  Then, sleep.  It was 7 in the morning.

The rest of the day is a bit blurry.  We road mapped the month and talked about the future of the project.  Resolution: we have to propose a payment plan that the villagers of Achinakom 100% accept by the end of the month.

The food is delicious.  Lunch: big moist rice, papadum, spicy brown okra dish, mild green potato carrot dish, strange red root vegetable crumbly thing, sour milk with random leaves floating around, spicy coconut sauce, small whole fried fishes, onions, bananas, boiled water to drink.  Dinner: small flat breads, quite spicy brownish orange chickpea stew, salty omelet, bananas, boiled water to drink.  There are no utensils here.  The idea is that you wash your hands and then use three fingers on your right hand like a claw to grab bits of stew inside ripped-off bread wafers, or to mold balls of rice together with saucy dishes.  It’s effective…when done correctly.

It’s hard to believe it’s only been one day, and that 27 more lie ahead of us.  Life without a frame of reference is strange.  Everything is unfamiliar, from the natural sounds outside to the sheets on the bed to the light switches to the soap smell to the air’s solid touch.  As Zach and I discussed on the plane, it seems hard to find an adventure these days.  When we look at the world through the God-lens of GoogleMaps or talk on the phone with an Indian person at some outsourced help desk or browse aisles of imported food at the supermarket, “away” is hard to grasp.  But I think we’ve hit upon it here in Kerala.

I have spent the past few days on administrative tasks (detailing a roadmap for the next 5 weeks and business plan development (expect a full post on this soon), but have also made two trips to our project village, Achinakom, to survey prototype construction progress.

Including the first, community-sized system, we have four complete or almost-complete constructions.

From Prototypes 1-4

The operational community tank

From Prototypes 2-4

An operational cast-concrete tank

From Prototypes 2-4

A completed (but missing plumbing) cast tank

From Prototypes 2-4

And an almost-complete brick tank

The second and third prototypes share a similar design, but with different internal reinforcement mechanisms (rebar versus wrapped wire). A mold was custom-built for this purpose:

From Prototypes 1-4

Disassembled tank mold

Although the construction of these smaller tanks takes only a week of labor, they have dragged on in some cases for several months. Part of this is due to unavoidable delays with materials, transportation, and concrete curing, but the process can certainly be faster in the future.

Material procurement and transportation is another source for efficiency gains. Substantial construction materials are left over at a couple of the construction sites, in some cases up to 50% of the original quantity purchased. Because building has been going on in parallel, it has been cheaper to buy materials in bulk and move them to each site. However, due to inadequate planning, excess gravel, sand, iron rods, etc. has been set out for each construction and moved on-site, usually by hand. Not only is it a huge waste of labor to carry 50 extra cubic feet of sand 200 yards, but a substantial quantity is lost in transport each direction. We need to work out a more streamlined system for central material storage (ideally at our nearby office), budgeting, and accurate distribution.

Such accounting seems a little (ob|ex)sessive when there are more pressing issues to contend with, but accurate budgeting and efficient prototyping are the only ways to reproducibly lower our costs and hone in on the cheapest long-term construction we will have to build into any revenue/payback projections.

All this, of course, does not answer the question of how a sustainable business plan will actually be implemented with the community (the social and economic obstacles), allowing R4H to continue as an enterprise beyond the limits of our existing funds. Stay tuned.

After several long travel days from Cairo (and a day in Mumbai with other Starr fellow Cara), I arrived at Mahatma Gandhi University in Kerala. Since Tuesday, I have been catching up with our main team members here, Sylas and Dr. John, and working out a schedule to push Rainwater for Humanity forward towards sustainability.

With the fourth rainwater harvesting system (one community-sized and three individual household) nearing completion, there seems to have been a lot more progress on the construction and technical front than social and implementation side. The team has been running into roadblocks in pushing for any sort of “payback system” for future tanks. Since our money is finite (and being used up quickly), it is essential that we change this attitude fast. It is something we have not done a good enough job in communicating to the village in the past, as we continue to build prototype tanks with few strings attached (user groups have been contributing with labor and maintenance, but not directly to the cost of the tanks). Initial efforts to reach such agreements have been unsuccessful, mostly because we have not come prepared to present a program that actually appeals to the potential users.

I think the next few weeks will have us reevaluating our role, figuring out if we want to be providers of a service or an advisory group to the village users. The difference is between positioning ourselves as “marketing” a “product” to “clients” and providing assistance to a representative body which is better equipped to decide how to allocate resources. Right now, we are trying to do both, taking just enough guidance from village bodies to keep us from implementing the project in a sustainable manner, but not enough to actually know what they want and present them with a clear and beneficial plan. The current implementation agreement with the village is based around interim sharing of single household-sized tanks, an equitable solution between 100-150 households in the village, but one which puts further obstacles between true ownership and payback.

We will definitely have to mix the two approaches. I want to make our proposals more market-oriented (with the ultimate goal of social good), meaning that it is up to us to figure out how to make our product appealing. This question must be undertaken with the cooperation of the villagers, since they have very particular requirements and desires. At the same time, the work we have done so far and social cohesion of the village makes it difficult to act as a traditional firm, marketing a product to each individual customer. We will have to figure out a way (perhaps through agreements with the village committee and formation of user groups) to work within this existing social structure.

Sylas and I are going to Achinakom later today (by motorcycle?!) to check up on current progress in the village. Elsewhere on the calendar, Sophie and Zach (of the Brown student team) are arriving next week, and meetings with the R4H leadership team, the village committee, and village general body are scheduled for the week after.

Keep an eye out for updates (photos!) from the village and numbers from
market research.

Back from site update hiatus; it’s been a slow six months for updates in terms of R4H.

I am fortunate enough to be working full-time on Rainwater for Humanity this summer through the Starr fellowship, and after a month of remote work and planning, will be spending six weeks (from the end of July through August) on the ground in Kerala on the project.

My time at home has been spent on a variety of business planning, economic analysis, and overall project scheduling for the months ahead. The central objective for the fellowship is to put R4H on track towards economic and social sustainability. Not to abuse buzzwords, but right now we have a lot of the organizational framework in place and have begun to make a real impact on the ground. In the course of making the operations work (building systems, negotiating hard questions with skeptical villagers, no small task), we have not kept adequate focus on our most fundamental goal as an organization: to turn rainwater harvesting into an entrepreneurial activity with positive social, health, and economic outcomes.

As it stands, our activities so far have been given away freely to the villagers. Although this has been necessary to build trust and cement prototyping goals, it has unfortunately given the impression that we will continue to be a traditional charitable non-profit. Early attempts at establishing a “pay-back” program have led to disagreement and resistance from the community. What we need to do is take a much more serious look at the impact our efforts have had thus far and the economic situation of the villagers, and use this as a jumping-off point to convince them that our program will be of long-term benefit.

This is where I come in. By looking at our extensive survey data and experience in meetings with the R4H team and village committees, I will develop a “pay-back” plan (or set of potential plans) which is of long-term benefit to the users and can become economically sustainable for us. This will be done in close collaboration with all the stakeholders, since they must buy-in fully to it. By the end of August, we will have signed such an agreement with the next user group as a pilot trial
towards sustainability.

At this stage we have progressed a lot. Constrcution of the next prototype will start on 25th January 2010.

5 Members of the Screpine society at Kallara who have already trained in masonry by the M. G. University adult education department and working as masons for the last 1 year have agreed to get trained in our programme also and I think they can influnce the women community at Achinakom too..

The training will start after finishing the second prototype in February 1 st week

John