AQWA - Social Impact Project

We are Mathilde, Nathalie, Manon and Pauline, the 4 co-founders of the AQWA association!

In September 2016, we will go around the world for a year to help and support social entrepreneurs who act in the water and energy sectors, thus contributing to a better access to these essential resources. We will carry out social impact assessment missions and strategic studies for them, which are key to their development. Every mission will last 45 days approximately.

Our final itinerary is yet to be confirmed, but here is a preview of our adventure: Tanzania, Benin, South Africa, India, Cambodia, Guatemala… These are some of the countries where missions are in the pipeline. You will of course be able to follow all of our steps through social networks and on our website!

We will perform one of our first missions for the social incubator MSABI in Tanzania. MSABI identified social impact assessment needs for one of the projects it incubates: Pump for Life.

The Pump for Life program is a maintenance and repair service for water pumps installed in rural Tanzania. The service requires water point owners to pay a monthly insurance fee that can be paid using mobile money payment solutions. The service allows ongoing maintenance, improved repair responsiveness, lower cost of spare parts and sustainable access to improved water. The goal of our mission will be to quantify and qualify all the changes that occurred to the water point owners as well as the entrepreneur repairmen thanks to the implementation of the Pump for Life program. 

We are really eager to work with the MSABI team, who sent us greetings from Tanzania :

Social entrepreneur, n.

A social entrepreneur is the creator of a profitable company (which does not depend on subsidies and donations only) whose main objective is to satisfy a social need. For him, the maximization of his activity’s social impact prevails over the maximization of profit.

Social impact assessment, n.

Social impact assessment consists in quantifying and qualifying the long-term changes (positive or negative, expected or not) caused by a professional activity on the environment, and more particularly on its beneficiaries/clients, employees/volunteers, families and directly concerned communities. These impacts can be economic, environmental and/or social.

 Social impact assessment has numerous advantages for an entrepreneur in the development of his initiative :

Social impact assessment is far more complicated than what we may think. It requires a special blend of ingredients!

Social entrepreneurs are usually surrounded by a few associates only, and they are all very busy managing the company’s activity itself (production, supply chain, distribution, promotion).

Therefore, social impact assessment is not their priority, even though it is often key to their development. By offering an externalized service, AQWA makes up for the entrepreneur’s lack of time.

Social entrepreneurs usually do not have huge financial resources since they dedicate their efforts on maximizing the social impact and not the profit.

This is why AQWA offers its services for free to social entrepreneurs, in exchange for a participation in local expenses (accommodation, food, local transportation).

Social impact assessment has to follow a rigorous method in order to establish reliable results. AQWA uses the methodology developed by (IM)PROVE, a French association specialized in social impact assessment since 2009 that has been training our team. This methodology uses key tools as “the theory of change” and “the impact map”.

AQWA uses a methodology that combines both rigor and flexibility.

Jump in AQWA’s history by allowing this project to become a reality! Thanks to your participation, you will be contributing on your own scale to guaranteeing a better access to drinking water, a fundamental human right and one of the ONU’s Sustainable Development Objectives.

In other words, become a HER-EAU!

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