Earth Water People are now in the Marshall Islands

Earth Water People Pty Ltd, is now licensed and registered in the Republic of the Marshall Islands in Micronesia. Director Samantha Kies-Ryan said, “Marshall Islands and Micronesia are a vibrant and fascinating region that are on the forefront of water security and climate change impacts in the Pacific, and so we are excited about what we have to learn and contribute through working in this region.”

Former Director Shaun Kies-Ryan, is no longer working for Earth Water People, as he is now working for the Pacific Community (SPC) across two water security projects. He is working on understanding how much fresh groundwater exists in 4 of the coral atolls in the Marshall Islands as well as ways to sustainably access and manage these resources in the face of climate change. When he is not doing that, he is working on ways to deliver safe drinking water to schools in the Marshall Islands. While we are sad to see Shaun go, we are proud of him and look forward to seeing what he achieves next.

Director Dr Samantha Kies-Ryan is now at the helm of the ship, and is looking forward to what new horizons may bring. Having recently completed her professional Doctorate in community engagement in water security and community-based water management, Sam will be focussing on research and consultancy work in the field of communication, community development and engagement, as well as evaluation and social impact.

Earth Water People Pty Ltd is also registered and permitted to operate in Australia and the Solomon Islands. Contact us about future work or collaboration.

Project spotlight: Klin Wata Helti Laef women's social enterprise

This project is a collaboration between Dr Samantha Kies-Ryan, the co-director and founder of Earth Water People, an Australian profit-for-purpose company working in clean water supply in the Solomon Islands, and Dr Donna Wate, a GP and the director and founder of Mere Care, a Solomon Islands company working in urban preventative health, particularly women’s health. Samantha and Donna are working together on this project to offer an innovative solution to the challenge of household access to clean water and its implications for hygiene and family health, particularly as Honiara faces the impacts of COVID-19. 

Earth Water People have developed a prototype water filtration system using a ceramic filter and other low-cost, locally available materials and tools. This project aims to evaluate the water filtration system as an alternative, low-cost household level water treatment technology, which is designed to help filter most dangerous forms of water-borne bacteria and viruses. Currently, this product is not manufactured in, nor imported into Solomon Islands. The filtration candles are commercially available in many other countries and have potential benefits for households in urban areas of Solomon Islands. 

The project would like to empower women entrepreneurs to make, distribute, sell, repair and maintain these water filtration systems throughout the city. Many of these women entrepreneurs around the city are already producing and marketing other types of goods, including hygiene and sanitation products and there is opportunity for them to do the same with these ceramic filtration systems. This concept of local household to household production and marketing could utilise existing networks to distribute this low-cost, low-technology household water filtration system. 

Dr Donna Wate talking to the women about the importance of clean water to good health at the Klin Wata Helti Laef TAS workshop.

About 50-60% of all people in Honiara have access to safe drinking water provided by the national water utility. Those who don’t have a water utility connection use other available water sources that are generally untreated or their quality is unknown. These water sources include bores, springs, rainwater or hand-dug wells. If household income allows, households may buy bottled water or commercially filtered water. During heavy rainfall events that cause unacceptable levels of sediment to enter the town drinking water supplies, even the water utility is forced to advise their customers to boil water due to insufficient treatment capacity and risk of unsafe drinking water. However, alternative options of other affordable and appropriate household level water treatment are not readily available and boiling water instructions are not always followed. 

Samantha and Donna are passionate about empowering grassroots women entrepreneurs to make, sell, maintain and repair the water filtration kits themselves, putting them in charge of their family’s health and giving them access to a sustainable income stream. This project seeks to address SDG 5 – gender equality, SDG 6 – clean water and sanitation, and SDG 8 – decent work and economic growth. 

Women learning how to make the water filtration systems in the TAS workshop in Honiara in June.

Last year Earth Water People and Mere Care secured seed funding from the International Centre for International Partnerships through their Pacific Connect program supporting entrepreneurs in Australia and the Pacific. This seed funding was used to undertake a technology applicability assessment with key stakeholders and grassroots women entrepreneurs using the Technology Applicability Framework (TAF). This Technology Adaptability Assessment gave the project team a chance to test their idea with grassroots women entrepreneurs, to understand how and if it will work and be sustainable for them as a business in the local environment, and what support may be needed, including the role of digital technologies, business and leadership training and hygiene education. Microbiology tests were also imported to be able to test and prove the efficacy of the water filtration systems. 

This study has adapted and applied the Technology Applicability Framework developed by the Skat Foundation (2013) to analyse the suitability of the water filtration system technology to the urban context of Honiara, Solomon Islands. The Technology Applicability Framework (TAF) is a decision support tool on the applicability, scalability and sustainability of a specific WASH technology to provide lasting services in a specific context and on the readiness for its introduction. Fieldwork for the research study was undertaken by Shaun and Dr Samantha Kies-Ryan, Dr Donna Wate and Mary Ramosaea and Mary Taupiri in Honiara from March-June 2022. 

Our market research found that 100% of women spoken to had no confidence that their water supply was clean, whether it was town water supply, rainwater or bore water. They reported multiple waterborne diseases and infections in their families. 

For the women who were consulted, who all ran their own small-scale businesses selling in the markets or through their social networks or online, the potential to be a vendor and make, sell, repair and maintain the kits was very appealing. 

The water filtration systems were not found to have competition at the household level, in that it was cheaper than other clean water alternatives. The ability to have control and confidence over the cleanliness of their household water supply, and keep down their household costs, was reported to be highly desirable to the women interviewed. The experience of seeing the water filtration system in action and being able to taste the clean water for themselves, created high demand for the system. 

The seed funding allowed us to test our idea and its suitability in the local marketplace. The Klin Wata Helti Laef project has the potential to have much broader benefits than just the women entrepreneurs interviewed, because based on the findings the project design and the product itself can be adapted much more effectively to the local context. 

A pilot is required to further test the idea, especially around vendor support in the social enterprise model (which is new to the Solomon Islands), as well as ongoing monitoring and repairs. 

Through engaging with women at the grassroots, community level, the project has great capacity to also incorporate with awareness around the benefits of clean water to family health and hygiene, as well as on-the-job practical financial literacy and leadership training for women running their own business. But this will require a larger pilot over 18-24 months, to fully develop and test. While tested in the Solomon Islands, the accessible technology has potential to be adapted and rolled out in other Pacific contexts where confidence in the quality of household water supply is low.

Earth Water People and Mere Care are currently seeking partners who are interested in partnering in this business initiative. For more information and to request the Technology Applicability Study, please contact us.

Project spotlight: Community-to-catchment research collaboration

Dr Samantha Kies-Ryan from Earth Water People recently collaborated with PLAN International Solomon Islands (PISI), Live and Learn Environmental Education Solomon Islands (LLEE), the Griffith University’s International Water Centre (IWC) and Solomon Islands National University (SINU) on the Community-to-catchment planning for inclusive, climate-resilient WASH systems in Solomon Islands research project (C2C). The research collaboration was funded by the Australian Government through the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) Water for Women Impact and Innovation fund.

Brendon Teava, Esther Tangithia, Collin Benjamin and Tema Wickham facilitating the inter-community dialogue in Verahoia at the end of the dialogical process. Photograph taken by Tema Wickham.

The purpose of the research was to increase water stewardship in the community, raising awareness of the health of the catchment and its importance to a healthy water supply, and that having access to healthy, clean water is everyone’s responsibility. The research built on the work that had already been done by PISI, LLEE, IWC and SINU in Community Water Safety Improvement Planning Cycle 1, increasing community awareness and planning around hazards and risks to the water system- the water source, taps and pipes that brings the water supply to the community. It broadened out the scope of the research to include the broader catchment, and raising future hazards and risks to the water sources that can come about due to climate change. 

Esther Tangithia from LLEE pinning up the photo stories and the action plans that came out of the community dialogues.

The collaboration applied Dr Samantha Kies-Ryan’s PhD research on using creative visual methods to facilitate community cultural engagement in water management in the Solomon Islands and adapted it in a practice context in the Solomon Islands. The team co-designed the research process during co-design and writing workshops, before testing the process out in two communities in Western Guadalcanal. The results are an implementation guide and a case study on the dialogical processes that have been created.

Samantha also undertook a Political Economy Analysis on water catchment governance in the Solomon Islands. She also created briefing notes condensing the findings and recommendations on ways forward that came out of the Political Economy Analysis and Social Network Analysis to be presented to national stakeholders and the broader WASH sector. These are yet to be publicly released.

The research process was co-designed by a talented team with a range of different experiences and backgrounds in practice and research. Going clockwise from the bottom left- Brendon Teava from LLEE, Mary Tahu, Joe Hagabore and Collin Benjamin from SINU, Esther Tangithia from LLEE and Tema Wickham from PISI. Photograph by Samantha Kies-Ryan.

Workshops involved teaching youth in the two communities photography and about the water cycle and the interconnections between the catchment and their water supply, and having them take photos that document the state of health of the water catchment. They then create photo stories that discuss their hopes and concerns for the catchment. These are then presented to their community in a community workshop. The men and women in the community have a chance to select photographs that represent the water catchment as it was in the past, is now, and could be in the future. The community discusses concrete actions that can be taken to protect their catchments, as well as choosing stories and spokespeople that can be taken to the inter-community dialogue. The final step is a meeting between communities in the same catchment, to show and discuss their stories, hopes and concerns about the catchment and come up with collective actions.

Youth in the research workshop in Verahoia discussing the photo stories they have made about the current state of health of their water catchment, and their concerns and hopes for the future and calls to action.

Preliminary research findings found that the youth taking photographs of the current state of health of the catchment provided a trustworthy local evidence base and changed people’s perspective around their catchment. This was particularly the case for some of the elders and even members of the water committees who had not seen the water source in decades. Photography and the photo stories was an effective way to engage youth in the workings of the water committee, but requires further support. Research participants reported that it was the first time that they had taken part in an inter-community dialogue, and they valued it highly. In particular, the water committee members appreciated the opportunity to engage the broader community and other community, in the work of enforcing and broadening the community water safety plans. The dialogue did stir up the desire for collective action, and with sustained support it has the potential to create sustainable outcomes.

A community member writing up the action plan coming out of the inter-community dialogue.

Samantha presented her PhD research, as well as co-presenting the findings from field testing the photo voice process with Tema Wickham, at the Water and WASH Futures conference in Brisbane on February 13 and 14 2023. For more information on this research or to collaborate with us in the future, please email us.

Project spotlight- Aligegeo School water supply

For World Water Day 2022, we wanted to spotlight one of our groundwater projects, the water supply for Aligegeo School in Malaita, which we undertook in partnership with Caritas Australia in Solomon Islands and the Malaita Provincial Government. The theme for World Water Day is Groundwater: Making the Invisible Visible and so we wanted to showcase the difference that reliable access to groundwater makes to this school and these kids.

Four years after it was built, the groundwater supply is still going strong and supplying water to the Aligegeo School population, and recently received its final upgrades to connect to the toilet block to supply essential access to hygiene. The Aligegeo Secondary School, in Malaita, Solomon Islands and its a boarding school for approximately 600 students and staff. The boarding school for girls and boys is one of the oldest in the country and for decades was often forced to stop teaching since they could not provide basic services for water supply, hygiene or sanitation. The existing surface water and shallow hand-dug well sources were subject to catchment disturbance, contaminated run-off or temporary flows. The Principal of the Aligegeo School, Alick Bebesia commented that if unsuitable conditions lasted for 3-5 days, the rainwater supplies would be finished and the school then had to close. In the past, the sheer number of students using limited water sources resulted in girls and boys travelling outside school grounds to locate other water sources just for basic hygiene, sanitation and drinking water.

School students at the school helping out with the construction of the groundwater pump.

In 2018 Aligegeo School unveiled a new pumped groundwater supply system to improve hygiene and sanitation for the students and staff. The system pumps from a 62m deep groundwater bore which was made possible through Malaita Provincial Government funding. Tapping into these deeper groundwater resources accesses water that is naturally better protected and filtered by the ground making the sources inherently safer than the previous surface water and shallow, hand-dug well sources.

The bore pump system was designed by Earth Water People’s Hydrogeologist, Shaun Kies-Ryan, through the work of Caritas Australia in Solomon Islands. Shaun also supervised the installation and construction of the pump, tank and water distribution system – the construction was a joint effort between Earth Water People, Caritas Australia in Solomon Islands, Malaita Provincial Government (Rural WASH unit) and Aligegeo School. Earth Water People recently checked-in with the Principal of Aligegeo School to monitor how the system was working. “The system is working good, no major issues” says the principal. He also recounts, “with this water supply we are back operating like a normal school, which is much better than what it was like previously”.

Furthermore, the school has also now received an upgrade to the male and female toilet and shower blocks since the school was assessed by government as part of preparations for a potential emergency COVID-19 quarantine facility to assist the nearby hospital. It is wonderful to see water supply investments such as these being upgraded and utilised to benefit Solomon Islanders. The ongoing reliable groundwater supply along with these recent upgrades will ensure the water supply system for the school continues to meet the hygiene and sanitation needs of not only potential COVID-19 patients, but also for the ongoing development of the youth of the nation for many years to come.

Earth Water People sees the demand for reliable, safe groundwater is growing in Solomon Islands. Shaun has been working in Solomon Islands since 2015 and acknowledges that the country is relatively under-developed in terms of its groundwater resources with very little known about the full potential. Continued effort and investment is needed to understand the groundwater resources so that they can be sustainably developed to meet water supply demands of future populations.

For more information and to work and partner with us contact us.