Saha Global Inc

Programs: In 2017 saha hosted 71 field reps in ghana. All of the field reps were hosted in tamale. 8 of these field reps participated in our solar program and 63 participated in our water program. These field reps helped saha to launch 2 new solar businesses and 17 new water businesses. These 17 water businesses provide permanent access to clean water to approximately 5,264 people and the solar businesses provide permanent access to electricity to approximately 752 people. Combined, these businesses also provide job opportunities to 54 ghanaian entrepreneurs.

when saha is not hosting field reps in ghana, our ghana staff is in charge of monitoring the saha water and solar businesses. Each staff member (we ended the year with 7 full time monitors. Started with 5, hired two part-time in the summer who transitioned to full time by the fall) are in charge about 12-18 villages each. The visits between 2-4 villages each day. When in the village, staff member speak with the entrepreneurs who run the water or solar businesses and interview them about sales. They check the water levels in the water treatment centers, and the number of cell phones charging at the solar business and visit between 6-10 houses in each community to check to see if community members are storing water correctly in their homes and if their lanterns are working correctly. Once a month, the staff members take water samples from each village to test in the lab. They test for both e. Coli and total coliform to ensure that the water sold at the saha water business is safe the drink. Ghana staff members check-in with operations coordinator, eda reed and morganne hodsdon every day and turn in surveys that the complete during their visits. Morganne and eda enter the information from these surveys into excel with water test results (in novmeber we transitioned from paper sheets/data entry into excel to using an online platform and mobile phone app, mwater to gather this information).

in 2017, saha began to transition our new business implementations away from the glp and to our local staff. We opened 3 new water businesses in november and december with our local team, which provide clean water to 1,184 and jobs to 10 ghanians. These three businesses were also used for r&d- we tested a new method for distributing safe storage containers (sscs). In the past, we have given one ssc for every household in the village. However, we have received feedback from our current communities that, often times, more than one family will live in a household and tensions would arise around who was responsible for the ssc and who was allowed to share the water. We have a hypothesis that if we distribute more ssc in each household then we will see an increase in the clean water consumed in the community. Since these implementations were used for r&d, they were overseen by kathryn padgett, saha's deputy director who heads up our new r&d work.