Start Date: 2014-01-01

Completion Date: 2016-12-31

Technology Used:

At the crossroads between a strong social goal and a pragmatic and sustainable approach, the 1001 fontaines model is based on the following key characteristics:
• Focusing on the most vital need of providing clean drinking water. inspired by the idea that "we drink 90% of our diseases" to quote the French scientist Louis. Pasteur, our project specifically addresses drinking water needs (2 litres a day per person) versus general water needs, which include drinking, cooking and cleaning (50 litres a day per person). We can, therefore, use small and flexible water treatment facilities instead of costly infrastructures.
• Ensuring the quality of the water produced and monitoring it regularly. The quality of our water meets the highest World Health Organisation (WHO) standards and water quality is controlled on a frequent basis by the local teams, which support the village entrepreneurs.
• Guaranteeing accessibility. The price of the water produced is set in agreement with the beneficiary communities and monitored regularly to establish the right balance between affordability for the beneficiaries and the necessity for the entrepreneur to cover operating costs and earn a living. Special attention is also given to the most vulnerable to water-borne diseases, namely children under ten. Through our Sponsorship Programme, we provide clean drinking water free of charge every day to the primary schools in the villages where we have installed a water production centre.
• Ensuring sustainability through a self-financing business model. Once a production site is operational, water sales provide enough revenues to cover all field expenses. These comprise the operators' salaries, as well as a monthly fee to a local technical platform in charge of maintenance and follow up (quality control, supply of spare parts and general assistance). This ensures that each production site is financially self-sufficient and that the overall solution is durable. We have recently launched a training academy in Cambodia to provide on-going training to entrepreneurs and enable us to scale up our deployment. This training programme will also be implemented in Madagascar while adapting to local specificities.
On the technological side, our solution uses and purifies water that is available locally – water from rivers, ponds, wells - following a simple but very effective process including pre-treatment (coagulation, flocculation and settling), filtration through a sand filter followed by microfilters (from 60 to 1 micron) and then disinfection by exposure to ultraviolet (UVc) rays. Distribution is done using 20 litre containers, which are disinfected, closed and sealed, thereby guaranteeing the quality for the end-consumer at the point of consumption.
This model has proved its value for 8 years in Cambodia and 4 years in Madagascar, and although improvements are always necessary we believe it can bring sustainable improvements to the health and quality of life of rural populations. In the coming years, our efforts will particularly be focused on strengthening the entrepeneurial capacities of local operators, which is the most exciting and at the same time challenging part of the project.

Phases:

The project will follow a 3 step process:
- Selecting and preparing the site in cooperation with the local authorities
- Setting up the station and training the operator - this is when most of the funding is spent
- Following up on the activity

Community Organization:

For each site implemented we work closely with the local authorities which play a very important role in Madagascar. The official local partner is the commune chief and the commune council which participates actively in the project by identifying an operator for the station, setting the water selling price (in conjunction with the operator) and contributing to the initiative, generally in kind through providing a plot of land on which to install the water production unit. A contract is also signed between the local implementer (our partner NGO) and the commune in order to increase appropriation, although the ownership of the water purification facilities remains within the hands of the local implementer.
In case a problem occurs during the project (e.g. the necessity to replace the operator) the project team always deals with the commune chief.
Another key player is the chief of the "fokontany", which corresponds to the village or community level (i.e. there are approximately 10 fokontany in each commune). The chief of the fokontany and his/her assistants are the nearest local authority, which is an important social gobetween for the project. We involve them in promoting hygiene behaviors and sponsoring the social marketing initiatives around the project.
More generally, local authorities and beneficiaries are regularly involved in information and consultation meetings by the project team.

Government Interaction:

Whenever possible, we emphasise building and strengthening relationships with local governments, ensuring the local appropriation of the project, as well as compliance and coherence with national development policies. A cooperation agreement between the Ministry of Water of Madagascar (MoW) and Saint Gabriel NGO (our local partner) was signed and regular meetings take place with the regional representatives of the MoW to monitor the project’s advancement.
In the context of the Millennium Development Goals, the government of Madagascar set the objective of providing access to safe water to 68% of its population, a target still far from being achieved. 1001fontaines wants to contribute to this goal and be part of the objective of the government which is to develop subcontracting with small private operators and reinforce partnerships with the private sector and NGOs (source: Government declaration on the water sector, May 2012). Furthermore, the principle of paying for water has been recognized in the water code, provided that the affordability of the service is guaranteed for poor populations.
In Analanjirofo and Atsinanana regions 1001fontaines has a valuable relationship with the regional governments, who participate in particular in the identification of priority areas of intervention and facilitate contacts with other organizations working in the same region.

Ancillary activities:

We have developed a targeted training programme - the "social entrepreneur academy” - in Cambodia since early 2012, to support the change in scale of our initiative and reinforce the professional capacities of the operators running water stations, giving them an opportunity to become real entrepreneurs serving their community. Now that the initiative in Madagascar is scaling up, it is a good time to transfer experience and expertise from Cambodia, in a domain as crucial as professional training.
The "academy" comprises about 60 modules in various domains such as water treatment, basic hygiene measures, accounting and finance, sales and customer relationship, organization of delivery, team work, self confidence, etc. The different tools and training methodologies developed in Cambodia will be adapted and reworked to meet the specificities of operators' activity in Madagascar and their local environment. We believe this capacity building component is the key to the success of our approach.
Another essential building block to make our action sustainable in Madagascar is the establishment of a local support platform responsible for monitoring and assisting all water stations. According to our approach, the platform - a team of well-trained technicians and community facilitators based in the city of Tamatave - will provide regular assistance to each station for water quality control, maintenance, spare parts supply and training, in exchange for a monthly fee that will contribute to make it self-financed after a few years.

Other Issues:

Bearing in mind the difficult situation in Madagascar on a political level since the coup d'état of 2009, and its disastrous economic and social consequences, our wish is to give local communities the opportunity to address one of their most essential needs, in an autonomous and sustainable way.