Engaging with the Community
Tiffany, Adam, and Jocelyn spend three days with WaterHealth in Hyderabad and Krishna districts working together to develop a communications strategy to increase the WaterHealth customer base.
Our time with WaterHealth and our three days in the field showed us that India is overwhelmed by advertising, even in the rural areas. Posters and banners are generally ignored and are not seen as trusted sources of information. People are curious to get into the details of a product, with questions like: how does it work? & why is it better for me than the competitor’s product? Providing people with information about the water treatment process and the differences between the WaterHealth water and the well water was extremely important. Whereas exaggerated scare campaigns were ineffective and caused people to mistrust the information they received, information, facts, and proof were valued and appreciated.
We realized that it’s much more effective for WaterHealth to engage with the community than to push information in a static format out to them. We looked at engaging the delivery people and trusted sources (teachers, doctors, religious and political leaders) to share information with people and presented other events-based approaches to engaging with potential consumers.
--Jocelyn
Related Stories
The team spends the week working with the team from WSUP (Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor), which is busy building a microenterprise to distribute water in the slums of Bangalore.
- Jocelyn Wyatt
- IDEO.org
- Story Location: Bangalore, Karnataka, India
- Applauds 1
- Views 860
- Comments 0
IDEO.org Co-Lead Jocelyn Wyatt provides some history on the progress of the Ghanasan project so far, a design process that started with the team asking millions of questions just 14 months ago.
- Jocelyn Wyatt
- IDEO.org
- Story Location: Kumasi, Ashanti, Ghana
- Applauds 0
- Views 448
- Comments 4
Since arriving in Kumasi, the IDEO team has studied where all the waste from pit latrines, sewers, and plastic bags ends up. And they've seen some pretty disturbing things…
- Jocelyn Wyatt
- IDEO.org
- Story Location: Ghana
- Applauds 1
- Views 746
- Comments 0
Research exploring sanitation in low-income urban India was playfully dubbed The Potty Project. The study pursued a user-centered examination of behaviours, experiences and attitudes to existing modes of sanitation in a variety of selected slums across India.
- Adam Reineck
- IDEO.org
- Story Location: India
- Applauds 2
- Views 679
- Comments 1
Jocelyn Wyatt - Co-Lead of IDEO.org and a lead on the Ghanasan team - explains why one of the toughest things about prototyping in the field is having to explain to people why you need to take the prototype away after they have tried it.
- Jocelyn Wyatt
- IDEO.org
- Story Location: Ghana
- Applauds 0
- Views 448
- Comments 0
Whenever I’m asked my impressions about India, one of the things I always remark on is the sense of optimism that permeates the culture.
- Jocelyn Wyatt
- IDEO.org
- Story Location: Kenya
- Applauds 0
- Views 609
- Comments 3
We are building small-scale, solar powered cold storage systems for farmers, with our technology, to bridge the deficit of 60% (37 million tonnes) in storage infrastructure whcih has been leading to 30% losses in fruits and vegetables produces, glut situations, huge yet futile government investments and last but not the least, farmer-suicides!
- Vivek Pandey
- Ecozen Solutions
- Story Location: India
- Applauds 0
- Views 476
- Comments 2
Villagers in Kapgari want to recycle residential wastewater for small agricultural purposes, as in kitchen gardening and livestock.
- Bulbul Sen
- Kapgari Inc
- Story Location: West Bengal, India
- Applauds 0
- Views 506
- Comments 3
The IDEO team spends time with Naandi Foundation in India designing appropriate water vessels for use at community treatment plants.
- Adam Reineck
- IDEO.org
- Story Location: Rajasthan, India
- Applauds 0
- Views 840
- Comments 2
In this session I begin to identify patterns and themes from my key insights and move into the realm of creating frameworks.
- Melissa Rohde
- Stanford University
- Story Location: Bhindar, Rajasthan, India
- Applauds 1
- Views 219
- Comments 2
Discuss this Story
Tweet
Hi Jocelyn,
Thank you for sharing this story. You indicated a crucial point of advertising being perceived as a credible source of information in rural India. I am curious to know more about how did you engage with the community to explain about WaterHealth. Is there any source where I can find details on the methods, language and communication medium to drive the message home?
Look forward to know more about this project,
Sheel
Hi Sheel,
http://www.rippleeffectglobal.com/waterhealth-india/.With WaterHealth India, we designed an awareness campaign where community members would bring samples of the water they drank and WaterHealth would compare it under a microscope to the WHI water. The community members could see the difference immediately and became convinced of the value of the treated water. This demonstration took place at a community event where WHI would bring in entertainment and offer coupons for their water. You can read more at