The Wish...

We wish for support of innovation, engineering design development, and a network of implementing organizations that together will disseminate robust, high performing, low cost, sustainable municipal drinking water treatment plants.

Resources to Scale AguaClara Globally

AguaClara at Cornell

Research and Innovation ($180,000 to $255,000 per year)

Automated Design Tool ($33,000 per year)

Engineering in a Global Context Intersession Trip ($30,000 per year)

Travel and Conferences

Plant Construction ($50,000 per year)

AguaClara Professional Organization ($??0,000)

As the number of partner organizations that are building AguaClara plants begins to grow it becomes imperative that these organizations create a network to share best practices and that there be an AguaClara Professional Organization (APO) that provides technical support and capacity building for implementation partners. We anticipate that the AguaClara Engineers will be incorporated into the APO. The APO will place AguaClara Engineers with partner organizations with a fee and financial structure that is yet to be determined. The APO will also work directly with the team at Cornell to provide documentation for design and implementation. The documentation will cover topics from initial meetings with communities to site design to operation manuals. The APO is currently in the concept phase and we see this as a critical part of our strategy to disseminate the technology.

AguaClara Engineers ($40,000 per year)

  1. Permanent Funding to Employ National Staff (ie Hondurans, Guatemalans, etc) or Fund National Staff in the Implementation Partner Organization - Expansion depends on building a program where we work that gains the confidence and respect of in-country authorities. This takes much patience and time, more than an AguaClara Engineer from Cornell will likely have to dedicate to the project. For this reason and others, we need a permanent staff of nationals in each country in which we would work. The more capabilities this staff has to work independently, the more flexibility the AguaClara Engineers will have to fulfill their primary purpose, which is to maintain the link between the academic advances at Cornell and the on-the-ground projects. The staff needs to feel a sense of ownership and belonging to the project (as well as to feel it meets their employment needs), in the same way we desire the beneficiary communities to feel a sense of ownership for the sake of project sustainability. To truly promote understanding that emanates from the internal level instead of promoting a paternalistic model, we should strive to trust our national partners with high levels of responsibility.
    I outline the general levels of personnel we would need below. These spaces could be filled by separate people, or by the same personal fulfilling various roles, such as the technician being the educator, or the engineer also acting as executive and grant writer:
    1. Technician: responsible for understanding and implementing water collection, transport, treatment, and monitoring infrastructure at the practical level, as well as diagnostic studies and surveys. Needs to be able to train other technicians and plant operators
    2. Engineer: capable of designing a plant in not alone then lead a small design team. Implies understanding the hydraulic and structural designs and consequences of design decisions on the long term functionality of the plant.
    3. Community organizer/educator: responsible for communication at the community and national level, awareness building, technical workshops, organizational training, accounting, etc (all the pieces of a water service organization).
    4. Executive: responsible for project management, political relations, grant writing, personnel management
  2. Plan of Action for AguaClara Partners: for the ideas in (1) to work we need a cogent scheme for what is required of an implementation partner. We need to define organization requirements, personnel requirements, technical capabilities, reporting scheme, capacity for financial self-support, and capacity for generating their own research and development. To expand without a cogent plan would quickly unravel the coherency of the projects.
  3. Improve the Public Website: While the AguaClara wiki is a tremendous tool for knowledge sharing internally in the project, and the current public website isn't bad, organizations these days rely heavily on a concise website with effective communication materials. Potential partners and donors will judge us by our website first before all things, and even though this isn't just it is a modern reality. We can improve ours since we have all the material to put on it. All we need is time and some funding to get it looking up to date. I very much like the Water for Waslala website style, that includes lots of easily access photos, and blog style updates: http://www.waterforwaslala.org/
  4. Create Strategies for Improved Financial Management of Projects - We can improve our management of "el billete" at both the implementation partner level and at the community level. We should also consider here new strategies for public water projects. At the institutional level, it will be key for expansion to define what kind of financial record keeping the partner organization needs to maintain, who shall audit them, and if AguaClara central has anything to do with this aspect of the projects. At the community level, we should increase our knowledge base of practical strategies to keep the water service providers viable (this mainly goes for rural areas where systems are less part of a city's municipal system), including how to create and get accepted reasonable rate hikes, water metering, accounting training, accounting transparency, finding the best prices for chemicals, and community personnel management. Innovative strategies that are on the horizon are revolving funds for water treatment plants made available to communities with no history of credit, and working with communities to understand the immense economical benefits to having a constant supply of safe water so that they can consider purchasing a plant independently and implement a payback plan. In general, this wish is that we acquire, generate, and implement more knowledge of community enterprise organization, capitalization, and operation (because the plant don't work if no one cares enough to keep it funded).
  5. National Level Outreach and Media Campaign in Country: I believe that the concept that public safe water can be cheaper and of better quality than bottled water is crucial for communities to consider investing in a water treatment plant. This concept is also a very cultural thing: in the US, it is mainstream, in Honduras and many other countries it is not, especially in those mid sized towns that have enough people to have real environmental problems but are too small to have received the benefits of major infrastructure investments. In Honduras, you hear myriad radio ads for water in 5 gallon bottles, how it is safe for your family. The water ads for public water mostly have to do with conservation in the dry season. To think big, we should consider participating in national level campaigns to plant the seed of considering tap water as the best alternative, showing just how much cheaper it can be, without the waste of material for water containers, pollution from water trucks, etc. Demand creation.

    Immediate Funding Needs as of November 2010 (by date when the funds are needed)

    These funds are needed by the dates shown to maintain an excellent program.