Story - Anne's Clean Family Business

Writer- Melissa Kyeyune | NGO- Water For People | Country- Uganda | SDG- Goal 6, Clean Water and Sanitation | Year- 2017 |

SDG 6: Clean Water and Sanitation | For about a month now, Eric has come home from school every day to find his mother Anne talking to a different neighbor from their village of Okidoi in Soroti District. Today he has just completed his Primary Leaving Examinations and should perhaps be celebrating with the other children, but he has rushed home, set his schoolbag down and slipped easily into his mother’s negotiations.

This is his favorite part of the day.

“The satopans are fifteen thousand shillings,” he tells the neighbor, with a big smile.

His mother nods at him to continue engaging this prospective customer, while she goes and talks to another one who has just arrived on his bicycle.

Eric continues to make the sale enthusiastically, “Once the satopan is in your latrine, you will no longer have flies. There will be no bad smell!”

The customers usually need a little more convincing than that. They need to see all of this firsthand. So Eric and his mother decide to take the customers around to the back of their house, to see the Elasu family’s own satopan-fitted twin latrines. Indeed, the customers realize, there are no flies and there is no odor, something they have never come across in a pit latrine. One customer pays right away.

The customer who arrived on the bicycle tells Anne that he can give her UGX 10,000 now and bring the remaining UGX 5000 later, if she will keep a satopan for him until he comes back. Anne accepts the deposit, handing the banks notes over to Eric to count.

Ever since her husband retired from his government job, Anne has become the breadwinner of the tightknit Elasu family, selling satopans from her home in order to keep the family afloat. It is a lucrative business.

Water For People, under their ‘Sanitation As A Business’ approach (SAAB) and with the help of local government, has identified business-oriented people such as Anne, to sell goods and services that will improve their community’s sanitation.

Anne was advised to take out a WASH loan from Water For People’s partner financial institution Post Bank, and purchase satopans from the community depot, SANQUA Engineering, in order to sell them in her village and beyond. One condition- the loan is not to be used for anything else other than her satopans business. She is far from the only one doing this.

According to Martin Eyura, the District Health Inspector, “The district and Water For People have engaged members of the business community to sell sanitation products alongside their other goods. Recently, an airtime vendor from a nearby parish bought 50 satopans from SANQUA Engineering to sell in his shop.”

SANQUA Engineering has seen a huge jump in demand for their other sanitation goods as well, including latrines of all types.

All of the above stakeholders- SANQUA Engineering, Water For People, local government, Post Bank, and Anne herself- are working together under the SAAB approach to demonstrate the ability to cost effectively move people up the sanitation ladder, while also strengthening the business community in Soroti district.

Judging by Anne’s profits, sanitation truly can work as a business. Eric finishes counting the money from the latest customer and puts it away into the family bag.

Organization website: https://www.waterforpeople.org/where-we-work/uganda