Water Solutions:
Seeding Businesses in Developing Countries

By Josie Pipkin

Katherine L. “Kate” Clopeck (MAE, Business Minor ’06) made a business out of passions she developed as a student.

She, along with Michael Brown (Comm ’06), founded the not-for-profit social enterprise Community Water Solutions (CWS) in 2008 to further their interest in providing sustainable water-purification solutions to developing countries.

She became interested in international development as an undergraduate, after traveling to Nicaragua on spring break with the student-run group the Nicaraguan Orphan Fund. Eager to use the engineering skills she was developing at school, she joined Engineering Students Without Borders and started learning more about appropriate technologies — simple, low-tech, low-cost technologies specifically designed for the developing world. “More often than not, the simplest solutions are the most sustainable,” says Clopeck. “As an engineer, sometimes you have to take a step back and stop yourself from designing a complicated system just for the sake of it.”

It was her interest in appropriate technology that eventually led Clopeck to study the global water crisis. According to the World Health Organization, waterborne diseases are a leading cause of illness and death in developing countries. “To me, the most shocking thing about this crisis is that solutions exist,” Clopeck explains. “Simple, affordable technologies have been specifically designed to be used by the people in developing countries to treat drinking water. The problem is that these technologies aren’t being implemented in a sustainable way. That’s where CWS comes in.”

Clopeck and her partners have blended technical skills with business know-how to come up with the CWS model. They address the need for clean water and disease prevention in developing countries by establishing sustainable water-treatment businesses that use readily available, affordable materials to effectively treat and sell clean water at the community level. These businesses are owned and operated by the communities that they serve, and use simple, affordable technologies to enable the treatment, distribution and storage of clean, safe drinking water.

To date, the organization has successfully implemented water businesses in seven villages in northern Ghana, providing permanent sources of clean water for over 5,200 people, including more than a thousand children.

CWS runs a fellowship program in which participants have a three-week water education course and leadership training in the northern region of Ghana. In 2011, CWS will run a total of four fellowship programs.