Safe water from woman to woman with Solvatten

The Project

Providing safe water by Solvatten to give to selected women in faraway villages, mainly in African countries. Solvattten is a portable innovative device that uses solar energy to purify contaminated water.  After a few hours in the sun the dirty water in the device becomes free from pathogens that cause diseases such as dysentery, salmonella, and cholera. A unique feature with Solvatten is that it also heats the water. This saves time, energy, money, and the environment.

The women we support take care of the family: they cook, raise children and care for sick relatives – often without having access to clean water. Our project gives them a chance to be important and respected members of their families by:

• Being able to provide the children with clean water to avoid diarrhea and other stomach problems.
• Saving fuel by less use of wood to heat the water.
• Improve social status of women.
• Reducing costs for medicine, bottled water, and fuel.

Context

Many villages in Africa have no clean water facilities and infrastructure and people live a very poor life with a lot of diseases, due to the lack of safe water. They use wood and charcoal to boil water.

Our main purpose is to help poor women to meet the daily needs of clean water in an environmentally and friendly way. By using Solvatten the need for fuel to boil water is reduced.

Our tool Solvatten is developed by a female accomplished founder.

• The device is easy to care.
• It gives 10 liters of safe and hot water in 2-6 hours using sunlight.
• An indicator shows when dirty water is safe to use.
• It can be used several times a day.
• It is easy to use and requires no batteries, spare parts, or chemicals.
• No maintenance costs.
• Has a long-life span.

The Swedish Soroptimist Union have so far collected approximately € 250.000 which we have used to help 2500 families already. We would like to, due to continuous demand, invite Clubs in Europe to support us in this successful work! One Solvatten costs approximately €100 and provides a family with safe, hot water for up to 7-8 years. Our aim is to send one pallet with 72 Solvatten at a time.

Methods of implementing the project

This project will be implemented in a village in Uganda in Africa. Our partner is a small Soroptimist club in Lira, who has helped us for 3 years and have already provided 150 women with a Solvatten. They are prepared to help us again. Our task is to get enough money to buy 72 Solvatten and pay for the shipping to and in Uganda. They will select a village that we accept, with the names of women who will receive each Solvatten. They pick up the delivery in Kampala and transport it to the village. Before distributing the Solvatten the selected women get training on how to use it. We have films from earlier deliveries that show how happy and relieved the women are to have access to safe water. After 6 -8 months, and then after 2 years, we follow up the results with a clear agenda and questions.

Expected outcomes

The impact of a village and their women have been very clear after the 10 years we have delivered Solvatten. An area with villages in Tanzania which we provided with Solvatten 2015 – 2020 have been visited by several of us and we had the opportunity to listen to their own stories on how the daily life has changed to the better with safe and hot water thanks to Solvatten.

Solvatten

• Empowers women – providing safe and hot water is very important.
• Environmentally friendly way of providing safe and hot water saving the forest.
• Contributes to improved health for the women and her children.
• Saves money and time.
• Allows girls to go to school instead of collecting firewood.
• Each family consists of an average of 6 people, means more than 430 people, of which approximately 300 are children, will benefit from this project.

Partners

Our partner that receives Solvatten is always a local club or organization. They conduct training activities and follow up the project and we have a continuous dialogue and contact, mainly on e-mail with our partner in each project.

Evaluation – Follow-up

We get one report from our partner at delivery, one after approximately 6 months and finally a summary after 2 years on:

• Their experience
• What benefits they found?
• Improvements of the users’ lives

From these reports the main findings are:

• Reduced risk of childhood diarrhea among children, which could lead to childhood mortality.
• Spousal relationship has improved – by being able to provide safe and hot water her status has increased.
• The importance of being able to bring Solvatten with you, when working, going to hospital etc. means the women can always have safe, hot water for drinking and cleaning.

Thank you to the following Clubs/Unions: (the list will be updated in due time)