In the coastal districts of Dacope and Shyamnagar, the drinking water crisis is so acute that those who can afford it buy water at high rates from private vendors. To counter this, we mobilised the Water Entrepreneurship for Women’s Empowerment (WE-WE) approach as an alternative social business.
Under the WE-WE model, all-female groups operate reverse osmosis (RO) plants, which remove salinity from the region’s contaminated groundwater to make it drinkable. The resulting clean water is distributed to community members at an affordable rate to ensure accessibility for low-income households, with profits supporting the income of the women involved.