Provide affordable water to villagers in Kerala

Dear donors and supporters,

Thanks for following our story. We have exciting new developments we want to share with you since you last heard from us. Read on to find out about an improvement in our model, our new partners, and our summer plans! 

Pivoting Our Model

Over the past year, R4H has sought to scale the program in Kerala, India. However, we have faced challenges in developing the organizational structure best suited for implementing our innovative water-vending model. For some months, we have collaborated on a MOU with a local, NGO (M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation) focused on rural development that will support the R4H organization in scaling and contribute to a joint regional water-health profile and educational program. Throughout conversations with the community and partnership negotiations, we have developed a new idea that will pivot our current model into an improved, streamlined program.

Through this new model, R4H will reinvent the way charity defines sustainable impact. To ensure that we retain our key innovations, we have dissected the original model down to its building blocks. With MSSRF’s administrative support, R4H will function as a seed-financing agent, which will essentially invest up-front capital, to seed-fund the construction of rainwater harvesting tanks for independently managed grassroots village projects. Additionally, R4H will engage the community by hiring employees from beneficiary villages to maintain tank networks and run the vending model for long-term impact. Intertwined, these two aspects encourage community ownership and ensure a tank network’s financial self-sustainability.

The creation of separate, community-run Societies will give direct ownership to the beneficiaries, implementing an incentive structure that promotes the effective management, construction, and revenue collection of tanks. As a seed-funder and consultant, R4H will focus on its primary role by advancing its original goal through its core: the community. Re-envisioning these components, we have taken our model one-step further by separating our organization’s critical activities to not only to retain the benefits, but also to amplify them. Overall, the new model not only solves the current challenges facing R4H, but also improves on the organization’s ultimate mission.

Summer Trajectory

We are excited to announce that with support from Brown University, the R4H leadership (Sam Lee ’15, Dani Flores ’15) will be traveling to Kerala as Brown India Initiative Fellows! Through the program, our team will have the opportunity to develop our new strategy on the ground, gather more first-hand community testimonials, and deliver a presentation to the Brown community on our progress.More specifically, we plan to 1) improve the internal structure of R4H 2) formalize our brand and 3) establish the first independent Society for immediate construction!

Currently, R4H has one hired employee, Jibin Thomas, acting as Program Manager in India. Jibin takes charge of expanding our partnerships in Kerala and directly communicating with the community. This summer, our team will continue these activities jointly and standardize the administration of R4H. A strategic work-plan will be developed for the remainder of the year to improve the international management of R4H. Additionally, we will plan for the hiring of new staff and budget for their operations. We believe this will strengthen our internal operations and make our scaling strategy a success.

As we grow within the community, the R4H brand becomes increasingly important. To improve our visibility and our credibility, we will create a uniform process and marketing materials to present to the community beneficiaries. This will include logo design, formatted documents, and standard procedures for the construction and management of new tanks.

Finally, and most importantly, we will be hard at work to set up our very first Society in Kerala. This will be the first step to pilot our new model in the community and learn from the community that runs it. It will also allow us to begin construction as soon as possible, to expand our tank network and finally get our scaling strategy rolling.

Thanks!

A big thanks to all of YOU, for donating and supporting us through our journey to provide clean water to villagers in Kerala. We hope you enjoy our updates and continue to follow us as we send you new information from our exciting summer activities!