Vuwa Enterprise

CATEGORY: Water

Vuwa Enterprise

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Vuwa Enterprise is a social business that designs and finances water management technologies to address credit risk for poor farmers in emerging markets.

Standings & Awards

53 out of 591 in Africa
5 out of 69 in Water
43 out of 573 in Pilot
60 out of 1066 in Blended
138 out of 4003 Overall

2

VOTES

Team Vuwa

Vuwa Enterprise has brought water to barren areas in Kenya, for both personal consumption and livelihoods.

Poor Kenyan farmers lack a system where they invest to increase their standards of living, because there credit worthiness is unfairly assessed in western terms. Vuwa Enterprise corrects this by assessing credit worthiness in untraditional and innovate ways that embrace the cultural context. We finance a house hold water storage-catchments system which help poor farmers increase their access to clean drinking water. During the payment period we collect information to build a Credit Score Report Card to help customers obtain credit from local banks.

Rainwater Catchments-Storage System: Vuwa Enterprise installs a 10-foot gutter system and a 100-litter storage tank. This allows farmers to capture and store rainwater. Our service officers visit weekly to pick up payments and provide a 6-month supply of Waterguard, which is a local water treatment product. Service officers teach our customers about waterborne diseases and the different ways to prevent them. Service officers also survey our customers, asking them about symptoms that are potentially caused by waterborne diseases. We do this to make sure that customers are using the Watergaurd correctly and to measure the impact of our product. After 6 months, Vuwa offers customers options to continue to finance more gutters on their houses or upgrade their storage systems to a 500-litter tanks.

Credit Score Report Card: The aim of this product is to increase cutomers acess to credit from local banks. Vuwa is able to gather 6 months worth of financial information about each customer eveytime they purchase a rianwater cacthments systems . Vuwa uses this information to create credit scores. We present this information through a physical card that we give to our customers after they have completed payments or have defaulted. Credit Score Cards presents basic information about the customer and the contact information of their loan officer. Vuwa customers can recieve up to a 5-star rating. This rating is determined by the customer’s timeliness on payments and whether or not the customer has paid the full amount. This product can help our customers recive more capital and lower intrest rates from local banks that Vuwa has partnered with.

FIVE PROJECT QUESTIONS Required (60 - 90 minutes)

1. What is your innovation?

The Vuwa Enterprise Team assesses credit worthiness in non-traditional ways. We use village elders as service officers because they are well networked and respected in their communities. We created a Local Kiosk Initiative to establish a credit/debt profile of customers and have created a few different financial lending models, with successful default models. Moreover, our two products alone, are unique water management technologies that harvest clean water and generate income for our customers.

2. Who gains the most?

The community: Vuwa Enterprise was created as a result of witnessing the effects of a drought has on a community. That 2011 drought displaced 8,000 Kenyans and left 3.2 million with food insecurity. Feeding centers witnessed a 78% increase in acute malnutrition. Farmers lost all their crops. Wells went dry as women walked further and further to fetched water, however that water is dirty and causes families to become sick. Vuwa Enterprise corrects this through our two products.

3. Who pays?

Both of our products are about $20 each, which is more than the average Kenyan farmer can afford. By installing the product and then letting customers pay over six months or one year with interest, we allow the product to be affordable. Vuwa Enterprise aspires to be self-sustainable and one day the team hopes we will one day be independent from donations. Vuwa is a social business meaning it works off a business model. However, all profits are reinvested to customers who need water.

4. What is your success?

This summer Vuwa Enterprise is planning to scale this project this to 250 community members. For every additional $20 we fundraise another family will increase their access to clean drinking water and irrigation water to combat hunger. And when they pay off the product, that family will finance another family to increase their access. Our project grows and allows community members to support one another through our financial systems.

5. How will you do it?

Vuwa Enterprise has already established a base in Eastern Kenya and we hope to continue testing our products so we can really expand our impact and scale to new regions to bring safe, clean water and new means of creating livelihoods in dry communities everywhere.