Friday, April 3, 2015

Vote for WaterSHED in a design competition! Once a day every day until April 15

Dear dedicated blog readers,

I am so, so sorry that I have been neglecting my blog a bit. I have a few ideas for upcoming blog posts, and I hope to be more active here in the near future.

As some of you may know, I have been designing a toilet shelter for rural Cambodians. Almost 70% of rural Cambodians don't have access to sanitation--and that means children are suffering from all sorts of terrible diseases, like cholera and typhoid. My organization, WaterSHED, has successfully sold over 100,000 toilets in Cambodia, but the biggest remaining barrier to widespread toilet adoption is the price of a desirable shelter for the toilet. My team has been designing an affordable, flat-pack, easy-assemble attractive shelter for Cambodian consumers, and soon we want to take our design from prototype to production. You can learn more about our product here: http://www.watershedasia.org/why-shelters-matter/ Or just watch this short video:



We have entered our design into a competition that, if we win, will provide us with support to set up manufacturing. WaterSHED's extensive sales network will serve as our distribution network--we work with over 170 businesses that reach 40% of Cambodia's population, and we're exploring partnerships with major multinational corporations to expand throughout Asia--and manufacturing is the most major missing component. However, to make it to the finals of this competition, we need to be in the top 10 receivers of votes in an online competition.

Please vote for Emily Gorbaty, Project Name: WaterSHED here: https://www.wishpond.com/lp/639776/entries/22982693

You can vote once a day every day until April 15, so please continue to vote for WaterSHED every day!

Thank you so much for your support!! My team and I greatly appreciate it.