World Water Day: water for all

World Water Day is a special day where the UN wants to emphasize the importance of water. Today, billions of people are still living without safe water, struggling to survive and thrive. The crazy thing is, our planet has plenty of water. We just need to make sure it’s the right quality and distributed to the right places.

At MegaGroup we are about Bringing Water to Life by selling water solutions to our customers. But we also want to play a role in making water available to improve the lives of people. That is why we have aligned our strategy to give back to the environment and unlock the potential of communities in Kajiado, Kenya, through safe water.

Waterstarters, a social enterprise

To realize this we have founded WaterStarters, which takes the approach of a social enterprise. A social enterprise is a business that uses the power of commerce to have a positive impact on the local economy.

WaterStarters is a platform to connect underserved entrepreneurial communities with investors for development of energy-efficient water points and establishment of water-centred social business. The model is based on the centrality of water as an enabler for stirring up socio-economic activities, e.g. horticulture, bee keeping and poultry farming among others, which in turn improves household incomes and nutritional outcomes.

Prepaid metering system

Under WaterStarters model, water revenues from each water point will be collected and managed through a prepaid metering system for accountability and prevention of non-revenue water losses. The revenues will be appropriately apportioned for repayment of investors, running and operational costs and scaling up to reach other underserved communities. Green energy will be used to minimize running costs while 3R principles (Retain, recharge and reuse) will be employed for technical and environmental sustainability.