Today I booked some holiday and visited a small business in
Haiti. The business is called DLo Haiti and it distributes water to rural
communities. Its CEO, Jim Chu, is a truly inspiring man. You should know about
him. Everyone should know about him.
First some facts. Haiti is a beautiful Caribbean island,
surrounded by deep blue oceans, with white sandy beaches and lush mountain
ranges. However since the 2010 earthquake Haiti is a country in recovery. 3000
people a year die of cholera. In rural areas unemployment is above 80%. People
hustle to survive. They squeeze out an existence. Haiti doesn’t have the luxury
of a water distribution network. In the big cities good quality water is
supplied by tanker to street sellers. Outside the cities its frighteningly
sporadic. When you can get it, clean water costs $33/m3. That’s 60 times the
cost of US tap water. In Haiti, if you are poor you drink untreated well water,
which is sold in the streets in 20 litre drums at a lower price than the clean
water. Most of the time there isn’t much of a choice. Its dirty well water, or
even dirtier canal water. Or nothing.
Jim’s vision for DLo Haiti is to establish a network
of ‘water kiosks’. These are basically shops. Shops that sell clean water that
has been produced on-site (using RO technology). He has 5 kiosks established
already with another 15 planned for the next 12 months. This is not a charity.
It’s a business. The water is priced at the same level as the dirty well water,
and (crucially) the profit is shared through the supply chain. For the full
story see the attached slides.
Jim is obsessed with building the local communities. It
starts as ‘just’ a shop that sells water. But by employing locals money stays
local. Suddenly the money isn’t going to the water trucking companies in the
city. Next the kiosks sell other liquid products: such as milk – from Haitian
cows and pasteurised on local Haitian farms. The water kiosk quickly becomes an
integral part of the local community infrastructure. And that’s to say nothing
of the healthcare benefits.
This approach is truly ground breaking. It is a fundamental
shift in how water can be supplied in developing countries. Jim is proving the
model in Haiti, but it could apply in many places around the world. Proving that
water supply in developing countries can be economically sustainable is vital.
Charity projects are great, but they are not a lasting solution. Often when a
water pump breaks down (which they always do) no one local has the skills or
capital to repair them. This is why most charity funded water pumps lie idle
within a few years of construction. Water businesses need to be economically
sustainable. And they need to be so deeply embedded into the local community
that the community feels they ‘own’ them.
So successful has Jim’s kiosk model been that the locals
apparently offered to ‘encourage’ a hotel to buy Kiosk water by setting tyres
alight on the hotel front lawn. He wisely persuaded them against this strategy.
In my few hours on the Island I got to visit a water kiosk, two resellers, and a
local school. The school was particularly telling. 400 students and teachers
sharing just under 150 lts of clean water a day. That’s two cups each if you are
lucky. Madness. I sweated more than that whilst standing there (It was hot. I
don’t have a health condition)
Isle gives a significant proportion of its profits to
entrepreneurial businesses in the water sector in developing countries (through
a charity we set up called REEF, the Revolving Economic Empowerment Fund). My
goal in meeting Jim was to see if they were suitable for support from REEF. And
they so are. Anyone who has followed these Notes this week will
know it has been fairly manic. Exciting and fulfilling, but manic.
However the 5 hours I spent getting to know Haiti and DLo
Haiti were, without a shadow of doubt, the best.
No comments:
Post a Comment