This is really cool work you’re doing! How much money has been donated more effectively as a result? I bet GiveWell and Open Phil would be interested in seeing the evidence generated as a result of your recommendation.
Unrelated and less interesting, I remember hearing a few years ago that the lack of benefits from providing safe drinking water (reduction in illness from water-born bacteria) was not due to a lack of technological solutions. In fact, the technology exists and is inexpensive to supply. However, there are societal and cultural difficulties in convincing people that there is any benefit to using the technology. After all, for generations they have viewed diarrhea as a part of life instead of as a symptom of unclean drinking water. I wonder what you’ve found related to changing social and cultural attitudes in lake or river communities.
Thanks! We only presented this report to Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation about a month ago, but we do plan to do a long-term follow-up to see if/how they act on our recommendations. The foundation has substantial (>$100M) resources at its disposal.
Part of our recommendations in this WaSH report are based on whether we think these new technologies will be able to achieve widespread adoption, based on the underlying technology, marketing strategy, business model, and team. One example of a social enterprise that has done this successfully is Sanergy: http://saner.gy/
This is really cool work you’re doing! How much money has been donated more effectively as a result? I bet GiveWell and Open Phil would be interested in seeing the evidence generated as a result of your recommendation.
Unrelated and less interesting, I remember hearing a few years ago that the lack of benefits from providing safe drinking water (reduction in illness from water-born bacteria) was not due to a lack of technological solutions. In fact, the technology exists and is inexpensive to supply. However, there are societal and cultural difficulties in convincing people that there is any benefit to using the technology. After all, for generations they have viewed diarrhea as a part of life instead of as a symptom of unclean drinking water. I wonder what you’ve found related to changing social and cultural attitudes in lake or river communities.
Thanks! We only presented this report to Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation about a month ago, but we do plan to do a long-term follow-up to see if/how they act on our recommendations. The foundation has substantial (>$100M) resources at its disposal.
As for the behavior change aspect, that’s definitely a problem. I recommend GiveWell’s report on Development Media International, which is one of the leading organizations working on the behavior-change aspect of this problem: http://www.givewell.org/international/top-charities/DMI So far, the evidence is mixed on DMI, but we chose to recommend them to another PAF client: http://www.harvardea.org/blog/2016/3/5/corporate-philanthropy-fill-in
Part of our recommendations in this WaSH report are based on whether we think these new technologies will be able to achieve widespread adoption, based on the underlying technology, marketing strategy, business model, and team. One example of a social enterprise that has done this successfully is Sanergy: http://saner.gy/