Our innovations

Max Social Enterprise: MaxTapWater 

Safe water for all domestic uses is essential for good health! Not just for drinking but also washing cups and utensils, bathing, etc.

Max TapWater was established in 2019 as a spin-off from Max Foundation. We did this to prove the business case for rural piped water in Bangladesh, as we saw a huge gap in the market. Less than 2% of rural Bangladeshis have piped water in the home. Even  though  water  is  supposed  to  be  a  public  good,  governments  in  the  countries  where  we  work  don’t  have  the  resources  to  meet  the  need,  and most attention goes to urban areas.

For more information see our Max Tapwater website, or read the one-pager here.

Maxi-Basin and the women’s bathing chamber

In addition to Max TapWater, we support small-scale business innovations in our communities. An example is the Maxi-Basin handwashing station, for use by the kitchen or latrine. It is a flexible product based on simple specs we give to local entrepreneurs. These are easily adapted to locally available materials and demand. For example, with a simple plastic basin or upgraded to ceramic. This has been a very successful money maker for local entrepreneurs – 200,000+ sold! It provides households with a low cost way to practice good hygiene.

We also designed a women’s bathing chamber for privacy, dignity, and managing menstrual hygiene. These are built and sold by local entrepreneurs who also sell the handwashing basins and latrines. All these products are meeting local demand, using locally available materials.

Healthy Village Tracker

The data and the insights from our programmes should be available to our communities and local government so that they can track progress and zoom in on what matters most to them. Our Bangladesh team  developed  a  prototype online Healthy Village Tracker, to track progress. Data gathered and verified by our call centre feeds into a centralised database displayed in the Healthy Village Tracker Dashboard. The tool makes it easy to see which areas are  performing  well  and  which  may  need  additional  support  to become Healthy. The end  goal  of  the  dashboard  is  to  analyse and  communicate impact in an easy, data-driven and user-friendly way.

 

Local government embracing the Healthy Village tracker

We are very happy to see that the Healthy Village tracker we have developed in 2020, is being adopted and promoted by the Chairman of the Jainkathi Union Parishad (municipality).

For  achieving  a  Healthy  Village,  it  is  crucial  to  know  the  real-time progress of the community and to be aware of the challenges they are facing to achieve their target regarding WASH and Nutrition. With the Healthy Village Tracker, this data can be tracked  automatically.  Based  on  this  data,  the  Union  Parishad  can easily determine what actions need to be performed to improve the health status of the community.”–  Chairman of the Jainkathi Union Parishad.