Women for WASH
Freeing Women from the Bonds of Poverty while enabling Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) for all
The Solution is in an Entrepreneurial Revolution: A WASH revolution is brewing that will enable disadvantaged women to join forces as cooperative entrepreneurs. Together, they will earn lasting livelihoods, producing and scaling Bio-Sand Water Filtration Systems and other life-saving necessities whilst leading entire regions towards realizing the vision of WASH for all.
Through their entrepreneurial efforts, WASH Revolutionaries will work to trigger demand for improved WASH conditions as educators and motivators in their own right, thus growing family incomes, improving community health, and saving lives as their neighbors become customers.
To meet increased WASH demands, Revolutionaries will also be trained to build hand-washing stations and toilets, as well as to produce and bring to their communities other life-saving necessities, such as soap, which can greatly reduce the number of children who suffer unnecessarily from deadly WASH-related diseases.
A Model Proven by Past Successes
Case studies have demonstrated that women, when enabled to produce and sell their own WASH provisions, can demonstrate tremendous success in their ventures, triggering community demand for improved WASH through their entrepreneurial drive.
In Tamil Nadu, for example, women took the lead in building toilets for their communities by becoming trained masons when the men refused the task. Said one participant, “Already, we have gotten offers from several households from the neighboring villages to build individual toilets. We are happy, as we earn a good salary and are also involved in the work to keeping people ‘clean’.” The participant added that she was now confident of taking care of her daughter’s school expenses single-handedly.