Innovative app for community maintenance of water systems and DIY toilet kit among solutions aimed at improving millions of lives
Teams from across 10 industry-leading companies and institutions have delivered more than 20 solutions aimed at improving water and sanitation for communities in need around the world. Early impact estimates show that, together, these innovations have the potential to improve the lives of up to 4,8 million people within 24 months of implementation.
Among the solutions is an app to enable local communities in Kenya, where one out of three people lack access to safe water, to maintain their own water systems, and a DIY kit to enable women and girls to set up a temporary home toilet in slums in New Delhi.
These innovations are the result of the first year of a collaboration by members of Design for Good (DfG), a unique alliance seeking to directly impact the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). The SDG are 17 goals adopted in 2015 by UN member states as an urgent call for action by all countries to end poverty, improve health and education, reduce inequality, spur economic growth, tackle climate change, and work to preserve oceans and forests. Each year, the DfG alliance focuses on one SDG, and each product or service delivered by DfG will be made available open-source and license-free to any communities that can make use of them.
In its inaugural year, which ended in June 2023, DfG focused on SDG6 – clean water and sanitation. Billions of people live without safely managed drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene services, which are critical for protecting human health.
Ximena O’Reilly, Global Head of Design at DfG alliance partner Nestlé, said, ‘To have participants from all kinds of countries around the world come together and collaborate not only on this amazing initiative but with designers from other industries – it’s a big deal.’
DfG will now work with more than 10 development organisations and innovation partners on sustainably implementing and scaling the solutions. The app for water systems in Kenya, for example, is being prototyped, and the long-term ambition is to scale to 580 schemes across rural and peri-urban Kenyan regions.
Established in 2022, DfG is a non-profit alliance of leading global organisations that aims to directly harness the creative talent of thousands of designers to design, develop and deliver products and services to improve the lives of millions. The products are donated fully open source. DfG’s founding alliance comprises many of the world’s largest organisations, including General Mills, LIXIL, Logitech, Nedbank, Nestlé, McKinsey and Company, Microsoft, PepsiCo, Philips, and the Royal College of Art.
Source: Africa Science News