Co-Director, North America
Current
Maji Safi
Cincinnati, Ohio Usa And Eldorat, Kenya Africa
I have been very lucky and blessed to have the opportunity to work with so many gifted people. One of those people is Mike O'Brien, Former Global Technical Director for P&G, (retired). Mike was originally asked by the AMPATH program of Indiana University's medical research program, (25 years of success in Africa, www.ampathkenya.org) to take a look at why the hospitals of Kenya keep losing supplies of safe and clean drinking water and how it can be corrected. Was it political, resourcing, technology, budgetary, desire, management, pipeline, sustainable human factors or basic knowledge or all of the above? How do we solve this and what is the future impact of sustainable change on the population?Developing countries have to come to terms with the gold standard of having safe, clean drinking water and that is it has to be bought. Technical challenges can be solved, water can be purified but the question is: what will create "real sustained habit change in the people of Kenya and other developing countries"? Mike is on the ground in Kenya 4 out of every 6 weeks. He came to me with this challenge and we have been working on an affordable solution and basic business model that solves the technical issues, educates the population and puts people to work while manufacturing with their own resources to create equity which allows them to reinvest into their own solution and "pay for water". I am happy to say that Mike has broken through on the engineering and created a product that costs between $9-$16 per unit (this will change depending on scale of manufacturing. The system can filter 20 liters of contaminated water/mud every 3 hours and can last up to 5 years. The filter specifically filters 100% of the protozoa and bacteria from the water, anything less than 100% is a failure. Mike came to me and asked me to help him design, launch and hone this model/opportunity for the people that need it most as a non profit. Please inquire to help.