Archimedes Project
Profiling a Disruptor in the Water and Sanitation Sector
In 2012, when Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast, I was a high school student. My family was without water for a few days, buoyed only by stockpiles that my father had collected in advance of the storm. Those days were some of the roughest I had lived in my young life, the difficulty exacerbated by the power outages that plagued the East Coast. Thus, when I imagine the situation that so many humans globally face — when I consider the infrastructural inadequacies that exist — it is hard for me to sit idly by. What, for me, constituted a grueling, but temporary, predicament is a daily reality for residents of many countries around the world. For the denizens of these countries, the accommodations you or I might make for a day without water are routine.
Archimedes Project is an organization which has as its ethos the sentiments that Sandy conjured in me: as humans we cannot sit idly by and watch our neighbors suffer. It is amongst the organizations working to bring reliable water and sanitation access to communities where toilets or clean water are often not available.
Archimedes Project first began to materialize in November of 2010, when Dr. Faith Wallace-Gadsden traveled to Saint Nicolas Hospital in Saint Marc, Haiti a doctoral candidate. The country was embroiled in its first cholera outbreak. There she saw the inadequacy with which the international community responded the diarrheal crises. She was witness to a revolving door of patients, housed in every ward of the hospital. She watched as entire families exposed to danger in an effort to care for their loved ones, (by, for example, handling buckets containing contaminated waste) often returning to the hospital themselves after having been infected. She noted the disparity between the access the Haitian people had to other products — the food they were able to buy on the street, the beverages, the buildings being erected — and the access that they had to clean water. Seeing this, Dr. Wallace-Gadsden felt the world could do better. And, whether she knew it at the time or not, the vendors and entrepreneurs she had witnessed selling their wares on the streets had given her the first piece for constructing a solution.
But there were other pieces to put in place. Almost three years later, in March of 2013, Dr. Wallace-Gadsden attended an event hosted by MIT that asked the question: “How can we solve more big problems”. She was disappointed. Not only because the event did not deliver a satisfying answer, but also because, at that and so many other conversations about “big problems,” the solutions that were so carefully crafted never made it out of the conference rooms. There was never any action. And action was at the forefront of Dr. Wallace-Gadsden’s mind.
She took matters into her own hands. At first the concept was vague; she knew only that she wanted to convene a group of professionals that spanned sectors and could contribute expertise to the resolution of water and sanitation (water and sanitation) issues in Haiti. With time and many conversations the idea became more and more refined. A month after she attended the event at MIT, Dr. Wallace-Gadsden had created the skeleton of the Ideation Lab. Things moved quickly from there: by May, a website was created; by June, Dr. Wallace-Gadsden had recruited her first intern; by July, a date and a location had been selected; partners and experts had agreed to participate by August; in November that year, the event was held.
The result of the Lab in Haiti was Kouzin Dlo, an enterprise which provided sanitary water to Haitian communities while empowering women to become entrepreneurs. Following the Ideation Lab Archimedes Project spent six months working with Jess Laporte, the founder of Kouzin Dlo, identifying and engaging with local implementation partners; solidifying business, financial, and operational models; and recruiting a launch team to test the business model in Port Au Prince. Kouzin Dlo flourished, bringing clean water to thousands of households in Port au Prince.
The Archimedes Project’s startup studio model was born of the work done to establish Kouzin Dlo and, as with any model in its infancy, there were many improvements to be made. The road that lead to Kouzin Dlo was paved as it was walked and as Archimedes Project began to think about applying the methodology to the global water and sanitation crisis, they began to reflect upon their work and identify places where the pavement might be made smoother on the next road. Archimedes Project invested time and resources into refining their process, into making the road to a social enterprise smoother. The involved focusing on the first two stages necessary to develop a venture- research and ideation.
Singular Focus: Affordable water and sanitation for every household
Archimedes Project undertakes all of its endeavours with a focus on a singular goal: to ensure that every household has affordable and sustainable access to clean drinking water and toilets. The means by which they believe this can be achieved is the establishment of human-centered, community changing businesses, which offer the consumer unparalleled affordability, professionalism, and reliability.
There is no reason for any one to question when their next opportunity to use the toilet will come; similarly, it is a failure for us all that anyone should go without water. Still, for decades, governments and NGOs worldwide have been unsuccessful in providing these basic needs. Archimedes Project seeks to end this inadequacy. To do so, the organization invests time in young professionals, providing them with the tools and connections necessary to conduct the research, generate the ideas, and start the ventures that will eradicate water and sanitation inadequacy permanently. Establishing Kouzin Dlo provided Dr. Faith Wallace-Gadsden with a blueprint for rearing startups beginning at their earliest stages — research first, then ideation, development, and finally launch. The years which followed that initial Ideation Lab and venture provided the time and experience for the process to be crystallized.
A Human-Centered Approach to Research
One of the biggest challenges to founding Kouzin Dlo is that the research too thousands of hours of preparation. Dr. Wallace-Gadsden conducted dozens of phone interviews with the leaders of companies and organizations working in Haiti in water and sanitation. While it garnered necessary background information to prepare for the design process, it was less than ideal.
The Frontier Social Entrepreneur Fellowship was started in 2015 to address the need for the research undergirding Archimedes Project’s social enterprises. Through this program, Archimedes Project partners with young professionals who is an aspiring entrepreneur, to conduct water or sanitation market research in a country they they are from or deeply connected to. Fellows focus on the factors contributing to the lack of clean water or sanitation. Selection of Frontier Fellows is undertaken with great care. They have to have a clear entrepreneurial drive, a driving commitment to improving their country and an interest in spending 12 weeks to understanding the market.
“What do customers want?” “What products are already being used?” “What have other organizations tried and failed?” Are just a few of the questions new ventures often fail to ask.
The Frontier Fellowship provided a two-fold opportunity for Archimedes Project. First, conducting research in countries across the world helped the organization better understand the similarities and differences across a variety of markets. Haiti was a pilot for the model, but the experiences had there could not necessarily be extrapolated to the rest of the world. Second, the Fellowship was an opportunity for Archimedes Project to guide an aspiring entrepreneur through an intensely human-centered design process, helping them understand the water and sanitation market in their target country: what do customers want?; what products are already being used?; what have other organizations tried and failed?; what are the major challenges and pitfalls to scale? Fellows often spent this fellowship, meant to be focused on entrepreneurship, doing almost no work developing a business model. This is intentional. It is a testament to the critical importance Archimedes Project attaches to businesses being inextricably connected to the people who patronize them.
Iynna Halilou was the first Frontier Social Entrepreneur Fellow. In 2015 she began conducting research in her native country of Cameroon. During that time Iynna spoke with NGO leaders, government ministers, and local business leaders in an effort to gain a full understanding of the state of, and reasons for, Cameroon’s water and sanitation condition. She went further and talked to potential customers to understand their wants and needs and what they found lacking about the current solutions. What she saw and learned helped her begin to solidify a vision for an enterprise that could alleviate Cameroon’s urban sanitation problem.
To date, Archimedes Project has helped conduct research in five other countries: Honduras, Ghana, Ethiopia, Rwanda, and Kenya. In 2016 in Honduras, Jennifer Vargas delve into the structural challenges driving inequity in Honduran water coverage. She provided a clear critique of the government while showing a clear path that a venture could take to improve access to drinking water in peri-urban areas. In 2017 in Ghana, Patricia Addo-Dombo looked at several different aspects of sanitation in Accra, including taking stock of the toilet situation in Demo, a neighborhood, where she found two working toilets meant to serve a population of over five thousand. In Ethiopia the same year, Fitse Gelaye explored changing government attitudes were coming up against community fears and NIMBY (not in my back yard) attitudes about poorly designed toilets. She delved into the possibility of reusing human fecal matter, providing a triple benefit to the Addis Ababa: disposing of waste, bolstering urban agriculture, and providing a new source of revenue for social enterprises. Most recently, last year, Leandre Kibeho and Phyllis Gichuhi conducted research in Rwanda and Kenya respectively. Leandre set himself to the herculean task of uncovering the water and sanitation issues that residents of Rwandan communities faces. In Kenya, Phyllis conducted market research which would later lay the foundation for Cleanshine, a social enterprise focused on improving the state of sanitation in Kenya’s informal settlements by cleaning, servicing and repairing toilets that already exist.
Translating Research into Action
The Ideation Lab is the second phase of the process. In just over 48 hours a small group of participants are treated to a crash course on water and sanitation in a country and are set to massive task of designing a social enterprise using human-centered design and lean startup. They are advised on these topics by experts in the fields. After learning about the problem and potential solutions, they are asked to engage in teamwork identify a problem, and generate an idea. Over the course of the weekend, they engage in business model prototyping, participate in multiple feedback loops, and give a final presentation where a winning idea is selected by the participants themselves. While competition is inherent in the Ideation Lab’s structure, collaboration across teams, sectors, and disciplines is at the core of the weekend. Without this mixing of ideas, the final ideas would be far less robust.
Archimedes Project has advised three student led Ideation Labs following the foundational Lab in Haiti. Students at Tufts University organized an Ideation Lab focusing on Tamil Nadu, India. Students at Columbia University organized a Lab focused on Nepal. Students at Cooper Union examined the sanitation situation in Myanmar. In contrast to Archimedes Project run Ideation Labs, the ideas that came out of these Ideation Labs did not become full fledged ventures but rather were an opportunity for students to think deeply and creatively about how to solve a large and difficult problem.
Transforming Idea into Reality
With the experiences from the Frontier Fellow’s research and the Ideation Labs, the Archimedes Project was prepared to move into developing it’s next venture. In March of 2019 Archimedes Project hosted an Ideation Lab in Nairobi, Kenya, a culmination of years of polishing the stages of the venture creation process. Phyllis’ fellowship research formed the basis for an immensely successful Ideation Lab which catalyzed new professional relationships and generated the social enterprise Cleanshine.
Now, Archimedes Project has turned its attention toward developing the Cleanshine idea into a testable venture. In the midst of the development phase, the goals of the organization are foremost on the minds of each member of the launch team: centering the human-centered design process, not profit, to ensure that the needs of the community are met. The Archimedes Project believes that if ventures are established in countries around the world with this mentality then the world’s sanitation problems can be solved; not lessened or reduced, but eradicated totally.
“One Woman Can Change the World”
Archimedes Project is at once evidence that one person can change the world, and that no one is an island. Without Faith Wallace-Gadsden’s fateful trip to Haiti, Archimedes project may have never come into existence and perhaps there would be no Kouzin Dlo, no Cleanshine, nothing to empowering inspiring entrepreneurs on three contents and nothing to galvanize students at Cooper Union, Columbia, and Tufts. We have Dr. Wallace-Gadsden to thank for each of these events. But note, also, that each of these accomplishments involved dozens of other people. From the Archimedes Project’s founding team — people like Angela McIntosh, the events coordinator — to the customers in Haiti who patronized Kouzin Dlo, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people are responsible for each success. This is Archimedes Project’s greatest pride and success: Archimedes Project is an organization with an intense focus on human-centered design, that counts people as its greatest resource.
About the Author
Reggie Gilliard was born and raised in New Jersey. In 2017, he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, and began a career in education. He currently teaches at Collegiate School in New York City. Reggie has had a lifelong commitment to service, working with various youth organizations, but Archimedes Project represents his first foray into water and sanitation. Currently, he supports the organization’s communications work.
Read More about the Archimedes Project’s work around the world:
