Household Water Treatment and Safe storage supply chain Network meeting

Tags: 
Abdul Rahaman Yussif's picture
Abdul Rahaman Yussif
Ghana
31 October 2018 11:37 UTC
Project reference: 
Scaling HWTS with a Try and Buy approach, Ghana


HWTS Network Group Picture

It was a meeting to celebrate our successes thus far in the ViaWater funded project on the scaling up of Household Water Treatment and Safe Storage (HWTS) in Ghana using the try and buy approach. It also included the identification of the risk and challenges faced during the implementation of the project and how to solve them in our next move to scale the project from 200 households coverage to 150,000 households in our current HWTS strategic plan within three years period from 2019 to 2021.
In the coming days we are translating the ideas we learnt from the Viawater webners in human resource, marketing and business planning workshops to build the capacity of network members for the effective and efficient implementation of our HWTS strategic plan.
Our current constraints are getting investment capital and investors willing to investment on our plans.

Vi Nguyen's picture
Vi Nguyen
Netherlands
2 November 2018 13:54 UTC

This is a great positive post, thanks for sharing! Can you share with us:

- what main challenges you faced during your project and how did you overcome them?

-  how will you use what you have learnt during this project to scale up in the future?

Looking forward to learning your innovation insights.

Abdul Rahaman Yussif's picture
Abdul Rahaman Yussif
Ghana
5 November 2018 20:41 UTC

I provide brief answers to your questions:

The main challenges we faced during the implementation of HWTS project are:

  1. Gender risk factors: the project targeted women groups but the implementation setting is patrilineal and male dominated by way of decision making. This risk was assessed to affect the buying phase of the project and thereby affect cost recovery by way of sales revenue. To solve this each woman leader was seconded by a man from the same community to pave the way for us to use a simple model of decide-and-I-pay (D-CaP) for women in households to try the HWTS product and provide enough evidence by way of clean and safe water for their men to give money for the final buying of the product to benefit their household members.
  2. We also faced critical skill gaps in areas of project management, communication, leadership and business modelling.  During my participation in the ViaWater Skills Sharing Seminar all these gaps were significantly bridged which I shared with my team members. This improved the effectiveness and efficiency the team.
  3. Other challenges were largely organizational in terms marketing, human resource and certain logistics. Through my participation in the webners of Via water some of these challenges to some extent have been addressed.

I intend to use what I have learnt to scale up the HWTS project by mobilizing my team to develop a three year strategic plan 2019 to 2021 and seek for an investment for a sustainable market based business that shall serve all income brackets including the BOP customers. This is a new area and therefore getting the right investment financing is difficult if not impossible.

Your questions were particularly relevant, thanks

 

Vi Nguyen's picture
Vi Nguyen
Netherlands
23 November 2018 13:37 UTC

Apologies for the slow response but huge thanks for sharing these valuable insights on your project. Innovation is indeed a learning journey and it is these key lessons that are most important in understanding how to move forwards in innovation. 

Wishing you all the best!