HomeWater Fund
Invest in Ethiopia’s Rural Home Water Supply
Every Day, Ethiopians Spend 15 Million Hours Fetching Water
Across Ethiopia, nearly 90 million people walk for water (Source: WHO/UNICEF), spending nearly 1 hour per household per day. Our target beneficiaries are the 37 million people walking less than 2km for clean water, A burden nearly universally carried out by women and children. Plus, the Ethiopian Ministry of Water has set forth the OneWASH National Programme (OWNP) to encourage home connections.
Throughout 3BL’s history, we’ve improved our engineering, construction practices, and tech, but one aspect has impeded growth: Finance. The Ethiopia WRDF (Water Development Fund) estimates that the OWNP has a 43% budget gap, limiting government investment in our projects. We’ve partnered with global finance experts to improve our model, but are missing the funding to prove the model.
Our goal is to invest in our community. To do this, we will establish a revolving fund which helps bridge the gap between capital expenditure costs and community fundraising ability. Communities then repay this investment through an affordable monthly pay-as-you-go charge, recouping costs in four years to be reinvested in new water systems.
With HomeWater Fund, we’re aiming to raise €200,000 to get water into the homes of 10,000 rural Ethiopians.
With this, we will be able to invest in 30 micro-grid water systems, an investment of approximately €20 per person. As these are paid off, we can reinvest to double our impact in four years to 20,000 people. By proving the value of our approach, we can then grow the HomeWater Fund and multiply our impact.
