Maji Milele Ltd. is the first subsidiary company of Water Forever. We are based in Nairobi, but aim to provide our services all over Kenya. Like our Dutch mother organization we are a for-profit social enterprise. Our mission is safe water for all Kenyan people and not only for a few years, but ‘for… read moreever’, meaning ‘Maji Milele’. We have 4 staff members.
The real start for Water Forever was in 2013, when we started piloting the business concept with 3 prepaid water points in Kaijado, Kenya. The pilot was technically successful and economically promising and the 3 prepaid water points are still doing well to date. People adopted the new technology very quickly. They fetch water every day, we get paid every day and once in a while we organize maintenance work.
The pilot project was supported by Aqua for All (financially), SNV and Susteq (implementation). The success of the pilot eventually led to the establishment of Water Forever International in the Netherlands and Maji Milele in Kenya, were we got registered by June 2014. Our first projects were implemented in 2015 in Wajir, Nakuru, Busia and Kisumu.
Other milestones in our history are:
– 2015: Maji Milele got soft funding (US$347,000) from AECF (Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund)
– 2016: Founder Marcel Schreurs received a World Water Leadership Award in India at World CSR Day
Sustainability and maintenance of rural and peri-urban water points has been a major problem for the last decades. It is time for change. We believe that our maintenance and service model for prepaid water points is a real game changer. People pay a small amount for water, but the burden of maintenance, repairs and replacement is no longer theirs, but ours.
Mission
Our mission is to provide safe water for forever. We want to break the pattern of constructing new infrastructure that lasts only for a couple of years.
We especially focus on people in areas of the world where sustainable access to safe water is not yet in place.
Values
Our business principles and values can be summarized as follows:
We are a for-profit social enterprise. Making profit is important, but the main objective of making profits is to improve and extend our services. Shareholders and managers deserve a reasonable reward, but not more than that.
Access to water is a Human Right, but sustainable water distribution is not for free.
The price of water must be low.
Extremely poor people can be enabled to get a minimum amount of water free of charge (to be discussed at community level)
If possible, we organize our services in such a way that a community savings account (see ‘About our work’) is part of our offer.
Service, honesty and transparency are our key values. For transparency: see our online dashboard.
We intend to comply with international CSR-guidelines on themes like environmental protection, employment regulations, gender, child protection, prevention of corruption and chain responsibility. Please contact us/inform us if you think we don’t comply!