Planning for round 3 of Biosand Filters

 If you have read the previous posts about Biosand Filters (BSFs) then you know that in round 1 we distributed BSFs for participants in a health and hygiene course led by our female facilitator team.  Round 2 will begin in mid-March, and in this round we will train village representatives in BSFs installation and monitoring, and subsidize them in selling BSFs in their villages.

To be honest, I have often cringed when thinking about the round 1 incentive program and the round 2 subsidy program.  I cringe because I fear that our good intentions to increase access to clean water (and introduce simple local technology to do so) will be sabotaged by dependency.  We have to be very careful when we make our NGO the source and supplier and motivator of the spread of these BSFs, because if people see this is “our” project rather then something of their own, then it stops as soon as we stop.  For this reason I have been pushing that before we start round 2, we also prepare to launch round 3 at the same time. 

Round 3 of the BSF filter will be building up a private market of BSFs; an independent market that is sustainable after we cease incentive and subsidy programs.  Does this make sense?  I thought that our team would quickly understand this, but it has taken weeks to convince them that this possible and something we should pursue.  My local colleague Zeke and I have gone round and round on this matter.  Zeke is very happy to see us move on to the subsidy program.  When I ask him what happens when we are done subsidizing he says that we should not stop subsidizing until everyone in our target villages have a BSF.  I called him out on the fact that our project’s broader goal is to encourage development across the whole province, and nation if possible, and not do things in our target villages that are impossible for other communities to replicate without NGO inputs.  Round and round we have gone, but I think I made a breakthrough last week when I identified the difference in our perspective on the project.

Zeke’s perspective on the project is tied tightly around the production and initial distribution of the filters, and for good reason.  Setting up a factory, testing the first products to ensure quality, and getting 700+ filters distributed in 9 months was not a small task.  My perspective, on the other hand, comes from entering the project 9 months after the start, and seeing the strength of the factory and the market capability of the BSFs.  Without any advertising, 31 BSFs were purchased at actual cost, by individuals without any NGO association.  This fact says to me that we need to jump on the chance to stimulate this market so that BSFs will be providing clean water for villagers here long after our project stops distributing them.

How do we, an NGO, stimulate a private market?  Good question, and honestly I do not know how we do it, but it’s one of my assignments, so we’re going to see what we can do!  I am genuinely interested in your feedback on the following!

The main points I believe we need to work on are:

1-  Maintaining the value of the BSF, province-wide.

2-  Advertising and demonstrating the BSF in public.

3-  Training the BSF factory masons to build more than products, to build lasting change.

Here’s some thoughts on each of these main points:

1-    Maintaining the value of the BSF, province-wide.

I shared in an earlier post that we have learned that monitoring and supporting BSF recipients is absolutely essential in order for the recipients to actually use and benefit from the filter.  Without this monitoring and support, many families could soon forget how to use the filter, or not know what to do if it gets plugged with silt (a common and simply resolved issue), and soon, rather than enjoying the life-changing benefits of clean water, they are frustrated about a 300 lb piece of functionless concrete furniture that some NGO left in their house.  If this becomes the experience of many families that receive BSFs, pretty soon the whole province will see the BSF as worthless.  How many BSFs do you think the factory would sell privately if that happened?

So there is a need to maintain the value of the BSF, but this is complicated because we are not the only NGO with a BSF project in the province.  Unfortunately the other NGOs are “big boys” that tend to use their massive budgets to litter whole districts with free products rather than to invest in training and support to encourage and sustain positive changes.  Last month in a WASH sector meeting (all NGOs in the area working in WASH meet to discuss topics and make sure we don’t step on each others’ toes.) I heard two of the big boys report their plans to do massive and rapid distributions of BSFs in 2011.  Since this time the question has been: how do we reduce the risk that these wide distributions will destroy chances for a sustainable private market?  My response has been to increase our NGOs role in the WASH sector meeting so that our detailed reports of our work on the BSFs will travel to the headquarters of the big boys’ NGOs.  I’m also searching for other contacts in the capital city that can help advocate for our example to be considered as best practice, which would push the big boys to slow down their plans and add monitoring to their budgets.  This is a very new role for me, but I think it’s great that this project has a strong enough foundation and reputation that we can influence the work of other, bigger NGOs.

2-  Advertising and demonstrating the BSF in public.

            The facilitator team is enthused about advertising.  This week we brainstormed a bunch of ideas and divided responsibilities for preparing the different advertisements.  I am supposed to oversee the whole thing to make sure our logos and messages are consistent, but it will be hard to keep up because these guys are movers!  By late-March we should have launched the following advertisements:

-       Teachers from every school in the area will be gathered for training and demonstrations of the BSF, then BSFs will be set up in every school, and student leaders will be appointed to maintain the filters.

-       Leaders of all local clinics will be gathered for training and demonstration of the BSF.  Responsive leaders might receive a BSF for their clinic.

-       Small billboards will be put up at the 4 main entrances to town.

-       BSF and hygiene promotion posters will go up around the bazaar.

-       TV commercials will air on local TV, including video of beneficiary testimonies.

-       A radio drama about dirty and clean water will air on regional radio.

-       And if I get my way, we will also do some “live informercials” in the bazaar!  The team is still skeptical about this idea, but I hope they will soon accept because 2 days of every week many people come into the bazaar from outlying areas, and these would be perfect opportunities to demonstrate the BSF publicly. 

Kinda neat huh?  I’ll see what I can do to show you some of the end results.

3-  Train the BSF masons to build more than products, to build lasting change.

All of the above advertising methods will be aimed at encouraging people to buy BSFs for themselves, for their own benefit.  We believe that if the factory masons get enough private orders, they will be able to continue production without any inputs from our NGO, which would probably be enough for the community to take notice, and other competing factories to start.

Before competing factories start, we have to be sure that we have impressed upon the factory masons that what sells the BSFs is not the pretty blue color that they paint on them, but the fact that the filter provides clean water for their family and reduces sicknesses.  If the future plan is for the NGOs to back away from the monitoring and support role (in order to allow the private market to continue independently), the factory masons need to be prepared to take on that role for themselves. 

It will be interesting in the future to see how private buyers manage to keep their investment in the BSF functioning for their family.  There’s such a stark difference in how people here handle private purchases as compared to free handouts.  If a free handout stops working after a week, the attitude is, “who cares, the NGO can bring me another one.”  But if a private purchase stops working, the buyer jumps on his donkey and goes into town to argue with the seller about getting a refund.  Prepare yourselves factory masons, this could get interesting!