OJAS’s objective is to improve the population’s life conditions, which includes finding an ideal solution against cholera. We decided to set up a water treatment center so we can offer a larger access to drinking water to low-income people, who are the most affected by this disease.
About You
About You
About Your Project
Organization Name
OJAS
Organization Website
Organization Country
Haiti, CE, Arcahaie
Country where this project is creating social impact
Haiti, CE, Arcahaie
Select the stage that best applies to your project
Idea (you're poised to launch)
How long has your organization been operating?
1‐5 years
Is your organization a
Non‐profit/NGO/citizen sector organization
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Your Solution
Project Name
Water Treatment Plant to Combat Cholera
Elevator Pitch: Share a concise summary. This will be the introductory text about this pitch that viewers will see.
OJAS’s objective is to improve the population’s life conditions, which includes finding an ideal solution against cholera. We decided to set up a water treatment center so we can offer a larger access to drinking water to low-income people, who are the most affected by this disease.
Problem: What problem does your solution address?
The direct link between drinking water and health is the best example we could find to illustrate how essential water is for life. Having drinking water in enough quantity and quality will allow reducing the consequences of water-originated diseases, especially cholera, that keeps on making casualties in our community.
Solution: What is the proposed solution?
Water and health are two strategic allies that contribute to the sustainability and quality of life. Water must be of good quality to contribute effectively to human health. To provide good water and ensure sustainability of health and life, we are setting up a water treatment center. We will sink a well and install a hydraulic pump which will be linked to a water tank. This tank will be linked to a filter, the filter to another water tank. The goal is to give the population access to drinking water.
Founding Story: Share a story about the “Aha!” moment that led you to get started and/or to see the potential for this to succeed.
Lots of deaths in the world are caused by deficient sanitation and supply water systems, especially cholera in our community. Sanitation services agents had to set up a CTC (cholera treatment center) in our community to help the numerous infected persons. It’s so common in our locality that when a foreigner comes and meets someone who is not infected with cholera, he thinks it is weird. After having studied the incidences of water-originated diseases in the community, their causes and consequences, we decided to set up this water treatment project in the community to sustainably fight this disease.
Select Sector(s): To which of Unilever's categories of sustainability does your solution apply?
Sanitation and Hygiene, Nutrition, Water, Waste.
This Entry is about (Issues)
Measurable Impact
Example: Walk us through a specific example(s) of how your solution makes a difference; include its primary activities.
Saintard is a town next to L’Archaie. There are 9,000 inhabitants. There are several drinking water supply centers. They come to sell us water in the town. We saw that improvement activities cannot be sustainably achieved without support from a solid social organization. Realizing that project in the town contributes with no doubt to the transformation of action proposals into concrete mechanisms of health problem solving. We focus on supply and sanitation systems.
Audience: Who have you identified as your customers/recipients and why? How will you get your solution to them or engage them in your initiative?
We focus on the link between water quality and diseases, and also on the indispensable participation of the community in the problem solving process. We target the local low income population, who are by far the most touched by water related diseases. We already rose awareness by telling them “Drinking water, source of life”.
Impact: What is the impact of the work to date and expected impact in the future?
We, men and women, are responsible for our own health. We are thus responsible to push community to get a good drinking water supplying system and an adequate sanitation system. Our right and duty to participate come from the general interest we bear in protection life. We think that a free person has to handle his responsibilities. After several activities in our town, we succeed in gaining trust from people in our community. They are more disposed to hear us than any political authority. For us, no mechanism is miracle solution, it’s by our own effort that we can acquire their trust. Finally, we need to learn more about our actual conditions by doing research after which we will take decisions. We will know which refill solutions are available and we will propose innovative means to establish new guiding lines. We will apply those different issues to the problems that touch them.
Growth, Finance & Leadership
Marketplace: Who else is addressing this problem and how does the proposed solution differ from these approaches?
Many other authorities and representative institutions work towards the same goal in the water and health sectors. Their role and expectations are somehow different. For instance, public authorities made an awareness campaign in the community, providing people with methods to disinfect water: making it boil. This method was the purpose of another debate: to make water boil, you need heat and how are we going to produce that heat? Chemical disinfection such as chlorine is another solution. Not everyone can get chlorine however.
Scaling the Solution: How do you intend to scale your activities over the next two years (e.g., reach new markets, diversify solutions, etc.)? What will make this possible?
Studies should be based on what already exists. We have to systematize experiences and best practices that already happened, so we can avoid repeating mistakes and overcome failures. This way, based on our creativity, we could offer the population new ways of improving its health state and new sanitation solutions to access drinking water. Thanks to this project, we are keeping on water treatment and prevention of water-originated diseases. What is needed now is having a larger impact, by setting up other water treatment centers. We cannot get large result without an organized society.Our community has 9,000 inhabitants. One center won’t be enough. We already started to think about how we can find funds to buy more machines.
Financial Sustainability: What is your business model to ensure financial sustainability?
Our organization has 300 members. We’ll offer them a membership card for 100 HTG. Card owners can buy 10 gallons of water per day. If he wants more, he’ll pay 2 HTG per gallon. Let’s highlight that market price for 1 gallon is 5 HTG. If we 200 people subscribe we earn 20,000 HTG. With that money we can hire a seller man and an operator. We count on their solidarity so that the center keeps on working.
Experience: Please provide examples of any previous entrepreneurial initiatives you have pioneered.
We set up a street light project to light the road. We set up 12 of them one year ago thanks to a grant from the Haiti Fund in Boston. All the problems stopped - violence at night, rape, lack of electricity. We told the community that the street lights are neither ours nor the funding organization’s, but theirs, and that they have to maintain them. Today, the lights still shine.