Filtering Arsenic out of water requires a pre-treatment

Currently DAM is executing several technical tests to ensure the filtering of Arsenic. To be able to do this, the water needs to be pre-treated. For this purpose, a 1000 L tank was installed at the test site. The water firsts passes a sand filter, after which it is collected in the tank where hypochloride is added for pretreatment.

In total, 7 water samples were taken and send to the Lab to test all sorts of water quality parameters. Voltea is supervising those labtests.

In the trial run test, it is observed that the capDI filter is capable of removeing saline and we are highly expected that it will remove Arsenic . We look forward to get the lab results. We need to know for sure that the arcenic is removed and that the water is safe. In the meantime, the community in Kalaroa need to have a bit more patience to be able to drink SuJoL water. The tests are foreseen to be finished by Mid of April.

Parallel to the technical tests, ProPortion, MWF and DAM are already preparing the stakeholder meetings in Dhaka and Kalarao, which will be held beginning of May. We invite a diverse group of stakeholders, varying from NGOs, universities, governmental officers, up to companies, MFIs, entrepreneurs, and so on. The purpose of the stakeholder workshops is to present SuJoL, and discuss the shared objective of providing safe water to the poor.

We have all sorts of challenges to overcome; technical challenges like how to treat the waste water, as well as marketing & awareness challenges like how to make people more aware of the importance of safe drinking water for their health. By engaging stakeholders in the development of safe water businesses in Bangladesh, we hope we can share knowledge and expertise on the one hand, and even look for partnership in the business model on the other hand.

We believe that together we can realize a viable social business concept for SuJoL.

You can also read more about SuJoL at http://sujol.akvoapp.org/

Last night, about 50 people came to the ‘Borrel-of-the-Pyramid’ to have a drink together with BoP-interested people. Tonight’s case study was about SuJoL. ProPortion presented the SuJoL project in presence of several consortium members (Frederik Claassen of EMF, Frodo van Oostveen of AKVO, Lieke Pijpers of ProPortion). The main insights and the context map of the community field study which was conducted last November in Bangladesh were addressed.

The case:

As management team of SuJoL you have made a decision (either female OR male target group). The current task of your MT is to develop a marketing & communication strategy. This strategy should give an answer to four building blocks of the business model canvas:

On top of that, think of a slogan that fits your strategy!
Some ‘fixed’ conditions:

The outcome was very impressive: 9 teams of each about 5 people have worked on the case for about 45 minutes. Each team presented their ideas within 1 minute. And guess what: we got 9 different value propositions. We celebrate diversity!

Since we did not expect this, we are very grateful for the interesting ideas. In the coming weeks we will use the ideas as inspiration to make some decisions on our own. The SuJoL team is currently preparing several stakeholder workshops in Dhaka (March 2012), where would like to get feedback on the decisions we have made over the coming weeks.

Once again, thanks for the good vibes and creatives ideas!!

Brainstorm about SuJoL case, during Borrel of Pyramid (@The Hub Amsterdam)

ProPortion has been asked to develop ideas for a CSR community program that fits under one of the pillars of the CSR strategy. The program should be scalable towards 25 countries and have a streamlined messaging and target group activation. More about the challenge can not be published at this time.

ProPortion has set-up a diverse team of creatives, who brainstormed for 4 hours. For this brainstorm, the ProPortion model has been used where the target group is put centrally (in stead of milk), and where 10 different ‘portions’ stimulate to create ideas outside dominant logic. The portions that had the most resonance with the target group are then being selected. With those selected portions, concrete ideas are generated: smart and effectives combination of portions is what we call a ‘Pro-portion’.

Brainstorm with Muriel, Lieke, Eveline, Merel and Thomas