Introductions:
Purpose of the meeting. how do we scale up AguaClara. How do we build 1000 plants a year
Sara gave a brief explanation of how the plants work.
Is AguaClara a good name for a global organization?
How do we raise $240 million a year to build plants? Either from local people, major donors or international finance or some other method
How much are people willing to pay for water? Market research
Paul Pollak argued that the only way to scale up the project is through the private sector. This can mean either working with big engineering firms or working on a much smaller scale.
One possibility to get started is loans from the World Bank
Paul- have to deal with the ground-level economics. We need to get the ground level economic data. How much are people willing to pay for the plant. One possibility for financing the plants is to give people drip irrigation systems
Jack Keller and Andy Keller from Utah State were mentioned as possible contacts.
Does this commercial model make sense?
How do we do this?
We could team up with either a large engineering firm or small engineering firms or increase the capacity of APP.
One idea was a training program or a sort of franchise system.
Water for people in Colorado was suggested as a potential place to get capital
One idea is to get the sellers of alum to participate in financing the plants
Analyze the plant and see who makes money from it and get them to participate more on the plants
We could use AEM majors we should think about starting a multidiscplinary team.