The Challenge

Our goal is to eliminate children’s deaths due to drinking contaminated water. We believe open communication will result in a solution and want to openly share our findings.

The challenge for any for-profit company with a non-profit or charitable offshoot is to capture and quantify honest user feedback. Identifying problems help improve the product. However, it is culturally unacceptable to speak poorly about a ‘gift’ to the ‘giver’.

We have spent over a decade implementing, researching. and testing various solutions prior to the foundation of GA2030. Typically, we found that people were intimidated by the technology and had a fear of breaking a highly valuable thing. When filters were disconnected or opened for cleaning, parts were often lost or the clean side of the filter was contaminated. We found filters where o-rings were removed to improve flow allowing water to bypass the filter. We discovered filters rinsed or backwashed with contaminated water that allowed protozoa and bacteria to grow on clean side of the filter membrane. When cleaning required backwashing with a syringe, the syringe was often lost or the method of cleaning was slowly abandoned or forgotten.

These are all disappointing realizations for any project when you return after a few months.

We have strategically partnered with local organizations that have built trusting relationships and can gather real feedback and validate the solution. It is not uncommon for us to visit a family months later to find our filters in the homes and well used.

Our partnerships and processes have driven us to go direct to the manufacturers of Ultra Filtration (UF) technologies to circumvent typical failures and greatly reduce costs.

If you have insights or solutions through your own charitable efforts, we’d love to hear from you.