Project Maji, an NGO, headquartered in Dubai celebrates 10 impactful years of delivering sustainable access to safe water across rural communities in Ghana, Kenya, and Uganda.
The initiative not only provides essential necessities, but empowers women by freeing up their time otherwise spent walking hours to collect contaminated water, allowing them to focus on school, work and taking care of their families as well as creating stable job opportunities.
Over the past decade, Project Maji has transformed nearly 400,000+ lives through more than 400 sustainable water access points, tackling the water poverty problem. With 2.1 billion people relying on water sources contaminated with faeces, the need is dire. While traditional handpumps were customarily used to provide clean water, they still presented significant challenges. 1 in 4 handpumps in Sub-Saharan Africa are nonfunctional at any given time, leaving an estimated 184 million people without reliable access to water on the continent. Frequent breakdowns, costly repairs, and the physical strain required to operate them made them an unsustainable option for many rural communities. Recognizing this, Project Maji developed a solar-powered water kiosk model, delivering clean, safe water at the turn of a tap. This sustainable approach ensures long-term, maintained water access while also helping to reduce waterborne diseases to near 0%, improving the health and livelihoods of the communities served.
Women and girls are most affected by water poverty as in 8 out of 10 households they are responsible for fetching water off- premises for their families daily needs. Bearing the burden of walking up to 3 hours daily in order to fetch often dirty water from open and unprotected sources, they endure long, treacherous journeys, often experiencing violence and harassment. This bi- daily task keeps girls from education and limits women’s ability to pursue work or care for their families whilst putting their safety in jeopardy.
To address this, Project Maji ensures the water kiosks are less than a 30 minute round trip for households, improving safety and reducing time spent walking. Project Maji prioritizes hiring and training women as local caretakers for each kiosk, ensuring a sustainable water source while also creating employment opportunities. Alongside, a dedicated team of engineers work on the ground to provide ongoing maintenance, a crucial aspect often overlooked in rural water projects.
Founded in 2015 by Sunil Lalvani, alongside his daughter Tia Lalvani, Project Maji(Maji meaning water in Swahili) has grown from a single water kiosk in Ghana into an established NGO homegrown in Dubai, earning global recognition, including The Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Global Water Aid Award.
The journey of Project Maji began during a pivotal moment on a routine business trip in Africa. Sunil managed Binatone, the family's electrical appliance business. During his travels, his driver suddenly stopped on a dirt road. Curious, he asked why, only to be told that children were collecting their daily water from a murky puddle. Growing up in the UK, where water flowed freely from taps, this reality was unimaginable for Sunil. As he stepped out to talk to the children, they remarked, on their way to collect daily water from the river, “Luckily, it rained last night,” revealing that the muddy puddle was their convenient source of drinking water that day. Stunned, Sunil followed them to their village and spoke with the Chief and Elders, hearing firsthand the struggles of water scarcity. Moved by their stories, he felt compelled to act.
Leveraging his background in the electrical appliance industry with a team of skilled engineers, he developed a solution beyond traditional handpumps, which required excessive physical effort and frequently broke down. Instead, Project Maji designed a solar-powered water kiosk, one that pumped groundwater through a filtration system, providing clean water at the turn of a tap. After creating the first kiosk, and seeing the impact made, Sunil soon dedicated himself full-time to the cause.
Following in his footsteps, Sunil's 13 year old daughter Tia Lalvani, asked to accompany her father on his first official Project Maji trip. Born in London and raised in Dubai, Tia had never considered experiences such as holidays and going out for dinners as a privilege, she had never given a second thought to basic necessities such as clean running water. Upon visiting Ghana for that first Project Maji trip, standing in a barren village, where women and children her age were living in mudhuts, with hours of their day consumed by collecting water at the expense of attending school or earning a living. She felt a responsibility towards helping to break the cycle of water poverty, ensuring that access to safe water would no longer be a barrier to education, opportunity, and a better future.
As the Project grew over the years, the father daughter duo combined their strengths to scale Project Maji’s reach. While Sunil spearheaded the organization, Tia took on the organisation’s digital presence, working on the website and creating the social media to amplify awareness. Both aligned on one key mission: empowering women through sustainable access to clean water.
Over the last 10 years, Project Maji has established more than 400 water access points, impacting nearly 00,000 people. With ambitious plans for further expansion, the mission remains the same: with an end goal to ensure that no child has to drink from a puddle ever again. Earning the Global Best Practice Award at EXPO 2020 and a Silver Award for Best Community Development with ALDO. The detailed approach to work towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 6, clean water and sanitation to help provide long- term sustainable solutions that truly make a difference.
Sunil Quotes: “Over the past 10 years, I learned how to adapt my commercial skills to the world of impact. To understand the key metrics of success lay in the number of lives we transformed instead of profit earned. It's given me purpose and drive and has helped to rally the team around me to focus on a single shared goal. This is what will keep us aligned and motivated for even more impact going into our next decade.”
Comments