Scaling Access to Rural Water

Beyond Waters's "Scaling Rural Access to Water" project uses Human Centered Design to understand the views of actual and potential customers and stakeholders in order to refine and re-test the design of its products and services as it seeks to increase access to water in rural Malawi. The improved designs of the pumps, the credit systems that make them financially accessible, the maintenance ecosystem that keeps them functioning and the routes to markets through partner groups that come out of this process, will then be brought together into a prototype business plan that will inform how Beyond Water scales up its operations in order to make water accessible and reliable across all parts of rural Malawi while also building a financial viable social business that is owned by its staff and reinvesting any surpluses generated rather than extracting profits for shareholders.

The project will therefore have a significant secondary aim of developing a way of working that is more effective and more sustainable in providing water to poor communities in general and the socially excluded within them than the current model in which infrastructure is given to communities who then struggle to ensure its maintenance and functionality.