How do you bring clean drinking water to remote villages in India?
Most people would respond with charity and aid, but Paul Polak started a for-profit business, according to Amy Alexander at Investor’s Business Daily.
Mal Warwick, who co-authored The Business Solution to Poverty with Polak, said,
The endless possibilities that can come out of bringing more people into the market economy promise a brighter future for us all.
In 2011, Polak launched Spring Health Water, which treats water and then provides it to villagers at a low price. It’s a win-win situation: the villagers are able to afford the water, Spring Health provides them with jobs, and Spring Health is projected to make 284,000 due to the sheer demand for water from developing countries.
Within ten years, Spring Health Water hopes to expand to provide water to one hundred million people.
Warwick and Polak wrote,
Don’t look at poor people as alms seekers or bystanders to their own lives…your customers. Always set out by purposefully listening to understand thoroughly their lives — their needs, their wants, their fears, their aspirations.
Spring Health Water is one more example of a venture that uses proven economic principles and upholds the dignity of every individual in order to successfully help the poor.
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