At the end of April, 2019, H2OpenDoors director, Jon Kaufman, was invited to speak at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in the Vatican for the Global Sustainability Network’s conference on Modern Slavery and Sex Trafficking. “While most speaking tracks were about legislation and law enforcement for these crimes against humanity, my approach was prevention,” reports Jon. “I put forth a proposal to create 1000 water purification plants, each to be run by 5 women who are vulnerable, exploited and marginalized.”
The impact of such a plan means that 5000 women would be fully employed, hiring 50,000 distributors to deliver family-sized, sanitized bottles to huts, homes, hospitals, restaurants and businesses on a subscription basis. Each plant produces $100,000 in annual revenue at just one-half the plant’s daily capacity, with $50,000 divided by the 5 women each year.
That puts them in their middle class in the very first year. One thousand plants would produce enough daily water for 10 million people, generating revenue of $100 million. Now that’s high impact.
The first president of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences was Galileo. Located in the center of the Vatican Gardens, the conference building has been a place where science, religion and economics converge to extend understanding.
