Global WASHES is a community-based research collaboration of University of Denver, Nairobi-based water and sanitation organization Maji na Ufanisi, the Rotary Club of Denver Southeast, Kibera-based NGO Power of Hope, and the University of Nairobi. Our goal is to develop and test a full service model of sustainable and scalable water and sanitation (WATSAN) facilities and services through research
and capacity building. We have been expanding to other villages with Kibera and to communities in other parts of Kenya. We are working with community members to empower community members to be clean water advocates, entrepreneurs, hygiene trainers, and toilet facility managers. Our project is innovative because it focuses not just on building the facilities, but also on improving health outcomes and sustaining operations, without which, a facility will surely fail in delivering intended services over time. We built our solution through studying the water and sanitation crises from a multidisciplinary approach, addressing issues of governance, hygiene and sanitation, and business at every stage of the project. It is the interaction among these areas that creates an effective model for water and sanitation delivery in disadvantaged urban communities, and is globally replicable.
