How would you like a total stranger coming into your home and asking you invasive personal questions about your life? Think about that question for a minute before reading on.

Much of my time, like others’, was spent on my laptop in an air-conditioned café or at The Hive (Pollinate Headquarters, also our accommodation). My group and I decided early on that the way we could make the most impact was not to maximize time on the ground in communities, but to minimize it. The best outcome was to spend as little time infiltrating these peoples’ homes as necessary to deliver high-quality, insightful advice in our report on the TamRas water purifier.

There’s an element of naivety to the view that these disadvantaged people would be grateful for our presence, especially foreigners with whom they are unfamiliar. Yes, there may be an element of excitement upon entrance particularly in the kids; however, there were cases of frustration too. If they don’t see positive outcomes linked to our visits, then who could blame them?

Thus, our focus became minimizing disruption while acquiring the information we required to help Pollinate better serve these communities in the future. What community visits did I personally make?

• A pre-survey visit to get a feel for the communities — Cobra community (less than two hours)
• Initial survey roll-out visit — New Horizons community (two hours)
• Water sampling visit 1 — Manyata community (0.5 hours)
• Water sampling visit 2 — Light community (0.5 hours)

Of the 11 fellowship days, I spent no more than five hours on the ground in Bangalore’s informal urban settlements. Other fellows’ community contact time would have ranged from equal to perhaps double or even more — this variation was due to project requirements, delegation of work and personal preferences. During my brief visits, I still felt I had gained a sufficient understanding and feel for community life from my first-hand experiences and while hearing others recount theirs.

All up, it’s been saddening to deepen my understanding of the quality of life many people lack. On the flip side, most people said they were happy — they have a strong social fabric in their communities and lead a physically engaging life — arguably their lives are more aligned with how humans have evolved over millennia to live; food for thought. I must say I was also filled with some hope that things could improve for these communities. Contrary to my initial thoughts, most of these communities, at least in Bangalore, are composed of economic migrants who are there by choice (a heavily constrained choice) instilled a sense of hope. Hope that with rain and/or more egalitarian government policy for India’s regions, they might possibly return to their preferred homes and lifestyles.

In relation to my group’s project, we got some water sample results back. Of the communities tested, most exceeded the allowable calcium and magnesium concentration (however, not a significant health concern). Most notably, one community suffered E. coli contamination, which would be mitigated by the TamRas product. A further benefit of TamRas is that regardless of water quality at the source, the product helps to mitigate the risks of contaminating drinking water by poor hygiene and sanitation practices. It achieves this simply through adequate contact time with copper, the product’s purifying component.

We were able to deliver a framework through which to categorize communities by health priority and saleability to help focus Pollinate’s efforts in future. We also formulated insights and advice from our dealings with community members and Pollinate’s sales team. We endorsed the TamRas water purifier to enter Pollinate’s product suite for sale and identified further work for future fellows.

In all, we felt we achieved our problem statement, which for us and Pollinate was to, “understand the water lifecycle of urban informal settlements to improve community wellbeing in India.”

Take a look back at my first blog post about this trip.

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My first few days in Bangalore were spent acclimating and familiarizing myself with the hustle and bustle of this vibrant city and the cheerful and motivated group of fellows with whom I’m sharing the experience of Pollinate Group’s 50^th fellowship program.

By Wednesday, May 23, we had advanced our understanding of Pollinate’s operations and the nuance behind its mission: “To empower women to lead their communities out of poverty.”

It was now time to get going on our project briefs — the main benefit that we are to provide to Pollinate Group during our fellowship. Our ArchTam team are spread across the four projects:

Me (Gareth): Tam Ras Water purifier (a new water-treatment product developed in Bangalore)

Ed: Cashless transactions — mobile money

Juliette and Sam: Poverty Index

Suzanne: Data Validation Study — Salesforce

I was thanking my lucky stars that I got my first choice in the water-purification project. Why? Because poor-quality drinking water is the source of many illnesses and sometimes death, particularly in children under five years old. In addition, much of my time working for ArchTam has been spent under the stewardship of our ANZ Technical Director for Water Supply and Wastewater Treatment, Peter Hillis, so I felt I could make more impact through this project!

The self-defined problem statement of our project is: “How might we understand the water life cycle of our community members to improve their well-being?”

This will involve an options assessment of the Tam Ras purifier and other water-treatment products against varying needs identified across the slum communities of Bangalore.

We’re still fine-tuning our approach based on what is realistically achievable in our community dealings — these will form the basis for understanding the needs of the communities Pollinate Group helps. The overwhelming sentiment from our visits (we have visited two communities at time of writing) is the friendliness of the people, particularly the kids. Most of the families would best be described as economic migrants coming from rural regions for better work opportunities due to the growth of Bangalore and the drought in their home communities, which has been hampering their ability to make a living.

Thus far, developing our survey has been our priority. We have spent some painstaking hours writing our survey questions, which must maintain their precision through translation into the local dialect(s), mostly Kannada, but some Hindi. We have some local fellows to thank for doing an amazing job in this department — they’re also great people! Today, we piloted our survey in a particularly urban community with success — vindicating our back and forth in developing our questions.

Stay tuned for what happens next. My second blog will be published soon.

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