How mWater Data Supports Project Maji's Growth and Impact
By Jessalin Nguyen
How can safe water enterprises benefit from using mWater? Project Maji is an example of how mWater’s data collection and analysis features assist the young non-profit to with data-driven management for WASH services: from mapping water points, socio-economic surveys, to 360-asset management. It shows a practical perspective of how the organisation improves its efficiency, operations and strategic positioning.
Project Maji started in 2016 when CEO Sunil Lalvani was driving by in Ghana and noticed children drinking out of a puddle. After speaking with the children, he realized that their village handpump was broken which led to them having to walk farther and use more unreliable water sources. Spurred to take action, Lalvani made it a mission to provide clean and accessible water to rural communities that needed them. Hence, titling this non-profit social enterprise with “Maji,” the Swahili word for “Water.”
At mWater, we are excited to partner with such an innovative Non-Governmental Organization (NGO). Their mission of restoring community water sources with their solar-powered water kiosks is both socially and environmentally sustainable, reaching 278,000 people with over 200 water access points in 3 countries. Lately in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Wieke de Vries, Director Development and Partnerships of Project Maji, has been presenting “Data-driven management for WASH services: Our journey from mapping water points to 360-asset management” at the Water LEX (Learning Expedition hosted by Danone Communities) on how her organization has been using mWater. The presentation is also available here.
mWater has been easily picked up through self-teaching with tutorials available on the mwater.co website and @mWaterOfficial Youtube Channel along the actions of linking data, creating surveys, entry points, mapping longitudinal data over time.
Currently, Project Maji uses mWater for 1). mapping water points, 2). a site selection process, 3). asset management and system design, 4). social impact measurement, 5). operations and maintenance, and 6). donor consoles.
1). & 2). Mapping Water Points & Site Selection Process: Project Maji finds water points that can be rehabilitated and improved by working with the local district assembly or water office to discover where broken infrastructure is located in that area. A process between meeting with the water sanitation committee and village elders, along with linking to sites that they have already mapped in mWater, leads to a more precise conversation on the feasibility of a certain site. Then a Site Selection Manager is sent out from Project Maji to survey for the potential of an intervention.
3). Asset Management & System Design: mWater’s newly launched asset management supports Project Maji’s mission in breaking systems down into more detailed purposes to build system designs that can calculate distances, altitude, and other necessary measurements. Based on those statistics, Project Maji can scope out their intervention through the number of solar panels, pipe links, and other infrastructure.
4). Social Impact Measurement: Coming onboard to Project Maji, De Vries saw an opportunity to quantify the organization’s positive impact in Ghana, Kenya, and Uganda with social impact measurements to share the statistics of the project's work. The previous ways of survey were mostly paper-based and were not effective. mWater filled that gap. She states that using mWater for digital pre- and post- surveys was reliable in seeing how Project Maji’s work benefitted a community after installations of water kiosks.
5). Operations & Maintenance: One of the strengths of mWater is its open-source model. The Operations and Maintenance Console was originally created by the Ugandan Water Project but has been shared to be used anyone. Project Maji copied the Console and modified it to their own needs and practices. This Dashboard contains useful information such as functionality rate, technical problems and if they can be solved, courtesy reports when out in the field, solar panel status, and annual surfacing reports. Among these factors is the “Issues” feature which allows Project Maji to be alerted of issues so that they may assign it to a local field technician to be fixed in at most a 5-day span.
6). Donor Consoles: In engaging with donors, Project Maji has found the Donor Consoles feature helpful. This feature allows them to systematically pull key information about all operational data important to their interventions (water quality, O&M Status, issues, etc…) and harmonize it in a donor console to “report” to donors. Thus, Project Maji can move away from long paper reports to a more interactive and dynamic consolidation of pre- and post- data just by sending a link.
As mWater continues to update with new features and as Project Maji evolves in scope and operational capacity, Project Maji will adopt more measures that they find helpful. Currently, De Vries sees opportunity for developing a water quality console, proving that there’s a dynamism and organic-ness to working with mWater and its constant improvements.