This August, four Brown undergraduates and a RISD student travelled to Dharavi, India for about three weeks to complete the pilot phase of their WaterWalla project. According to project member Anshu Vaish '12, WaterWalla is Hindu for water provider, which is exactly what the project aims to do.
During their visit to Dharavi, Vaish, Neil Parikh '11, Nehal Doshi '12, Darin Kurti '12 and RISD senior Soaib Grewal took water samples from about 50 different locations and gained support from Equinox Labs, a testing laboratory in India that agreed to partner with WaterWalla and do all the testing pro bono, Vaish said. In future stages of the project, members will return to Dharavi to test potential solutions for purifying the water. Some solutions already exist in the city, but members might also consider bringing in solutions from abroad, they said.
The eventual goal is for the project to "self-eliminate," said new project member Angad Kochar '12.
Their plan for sustainability is that entrepreneurs in Dharavi "will take these things and sell them to the people in the slums," Parikh said. He said Dharavi was chosen as the project's pilot location for its vast industry and "business-minded" people.
If the project works in Dharavi, Kurti said, he hopes the project can spread to "India, Asia and the world."
Grewal said members realized before the project started that many residents of urban slums were not receiving benefits of government infrastructure in India. Though the government sends clean water from the source, the water must past through "pipelines about 150 years old" to reach the slums and gets contaminated on the way, Grewal said.
The members of the project "all come from different fields," Vaish said, and wanted to bring their various skills together to solve the problem of hygiene and sanitation in India. The project grew from the members' desire to see what Vaish called "a practical application" from their studies.
Members of the group said the biggest concern now is funding. Kurti and Doshi both said that everything so far has been "out of our pockets." They plan to return to India in December for the next phase of testing for the project. But until then, they said they will be seeking funds, grants and in-kind donations such as advice from professionals.
It's all about "connecting us to the right people who really share our vision," Parikh said. "We would love people who are experts in the field," Grewal added.
But more than anything, the team is ready to return to Dharavi, members said. Despite countless NGOs working in the area, "the people in the slum never see anything," Vaish said. The WaterWalla team is trying to change that, he said.
