We heard about the 300 in 6 initiative of the Netherlands Water Partnership the aim of which is to provide safe drinking water to 300 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa within 6 years for $10.00 per family. Six is the size of the average family in the region so that's only 50 million filters and only half a billion dollars. What's so hard about that? In the effort to provide safe drinking water to the billion people who lack access to that fundamental necessity, the filter - or another means of purification - is only one element, but that's where QuenchWorks is starting. We've developed products for some of the most prominent companies in the world, that's where our expertise lies, those are the skills that we have to address this urgent need. There are many filters out there from clay pots to solar pasteurizers to reverse osmosis and QuenchWorks will test and evaluate them for effectiveness, durability, maintainability, usability and manufacturability (we'll call them, collectively, filters, even though some water purification devices do not filter). Based on those findings, and on the advice of our affiliates and contributors, we will design, adapt or develop a device, or more likely several devices, to make contaminated water healthy at the point of use (POU) on a scale useful to individual households.
QuenchWorks must be conducted like any successful corporate product development program. If the marketing department of an established company were to identify a half-billion dollar market, the engineering and design departments might get a year to develop the product and that's our commitment - to treat this like an urgent corporate R&D program - our aim is to have one or more devices in production within one year.
It is obvious that the best purification devices will be useless if they don't get to the people who need them or our customers don't understand them or can't service them so QuenchWorks won't be successful without these components:
A business plan - We will operate QuenchWorks like a business and it's the rarest of enterprises that succeeds without thoughtful and deliberate planning.
Funding - It won't happen if we try to do it in our spare time after dinner.
Marketing - How will our needy customers know that there is a simple and affordable device that can save their lives?
Distribution - Our 50 million families will be spread among tens, or hundreds, of thousands of villages, towns and cities; developing the devices will be the easy part, how we distribute them is just as important and must be the subject of intense development. An effective distribution model will allow other products and services to reach those in need.
Education - Many of us learned about germs as toddlers. We must introduce the concept to illiterate people who speak a hundred obscure languages and get them to accept the concept that there are invisible beasts in their water that will make them sick. We will develop a graphical user interface (GUI) that will explain the function of our devices regardless of the users' language or literacy.
Manufacturing - We know how to make things, we've been in hundreds of factories and have personal, direct experience with most methods and materials. We'll identify qualified manufacturers and hold them to the highest standards of product quality and value. We expect to apply the IKEA model which is to design for efficient manufacture and make the product in sufficient quantity to reach the customer at a surprisingly low price.
Then what?
Let's say that we achieve all that in one year - we'd better get started!
The best filter in the world won't do much good if the water that it yields becomes re-contaminated so QuenchWorks will identify, or develop, secure methods for water storage. People get water from lots of sources including wells, cisterns and the sky. Quenchworks will work to develop new or improve existing pumps and methods for gathering rain and condensation.
Water scarcity can't be considered without thinking about food preparation and sanitation and we are eager to apply the same kind of thought and energy to wood-gasification stoves and composting toilets - just a couple of the technologies that promise to improve people's lives as well as their immediate environment and ours too.
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