Overview Our plan is to utilize the heavy rainfall in Bangladesh to collect and sell rain water to sell to businesses

in the local community. Our purpose in doing this is not only to provide a financial resource to make our school self-sustainable but also to provide our students with technical and vocational training that they can employ beyond their education. The Need Our venture Akash Pani (or Skywater) aims to address the dual issues of arsenic contamination in the water sources of rural Bangladesh and womens empowerment through education. This venture has been specifically designed to address the immense issue of water quality in rural Bangladesh. Groundwater sources of drinking water have been problematic not only for the decrease in usable hand-pumps to extract water, but also the detrimental effects of the naturally occurring arsenic compound in the water; over 20 million people have been poisoned by this compound. With this reality in mind, many rural Bangladeshis turn away from wells and instead look to surface water sources, which, although not polluted with arsenic are not suitable for drinking. As is the case in many developing countries, women in Bangladesh are primarily responsible for collecting water for their families. This process involves walking long distances to retrieve water and carrying these heavy loads of water back to their homes. This task is not only back-breaking work which has caused frequent growth problems in women, but has also been stifling to economic and personal growth as it prohibits these women from pursuing other objectives. By educating these women on water quality issues, and providing an alternative to surface and groundwater sources, Circle of Women empowers them to take an active role in their community and spread awareness about health issues associated with poor water quality. How it works The construction of the water harvesting system will occur simultaneously with the construction of our school. We will have to accommodate the schools construction with the necessary materials for this venture. All construction materials should be

available in Dhaka if not locally. The roof must be of a non-corrosive metal, a gutter system must be installed using any non-reactive plastic (like PVC), and the ferro cement storage tanks will go at the back of the school building. Little serious maintenance should be required, however a daily cleaning of the roof and gutters will be necessary to prevent build up or bacterial contamination. The storage tanks must be drained and cleaned once a year to prevent bacterial build up. Once the water is harvested a filtering or pasteurization system will hook up to the storage tanks to fill reusable 20 liter plastic jugs with clean drinking water. While pasteurization is a viable option, with the reduced direct sunlight during the monsoon season, clay or carbon filters might be a better option for our venture. Progress As the water crisis in Bangladesh continues to worsen, local and international NGOs, as well as large multinational corporations with an interest in this highly populated country, are mobilizing their knowledge and resources to address the threat. A number of these institutions have identified the installation of rainwater-harvesting systems in local schools as a key technology in this regard. The most recent and widespread campaign was initiated by Coca-Cola Far East Ltd in partnership with Plan Bangladesh and later supported by UN-Habitat. Beginning in 2008, Coca-Cola and Plan Bangladesh installed the rainwater harvesting technology in five primary schools in Mirpur and Borguna Sadar areas. In March of 2010, UN-Habitat joined Coke and the Bangladeshi Government to embark on The Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation Project, which aims at brining water to 6,000 families. As part of this project, UN-Habitat aims to install rainwater-harvesting systems at 20 Bangladeshi schools in Dhaka and Comilla. According to sources, the rainwaterharvesting systems commissioned by this project will be able to deliver and store 50,000 liters of rainwater per year. Our Impact While the previously created initiatives are extremely admirable and have proven to be successful over the past two years, their sole aim is to sustain the water needs of the

individual primary schools and their students. They are able to do so with 50,000 liters of collected rainwater on an annual basis. In addition to sustaining the schools water needs (which we have allocated 60,000 liters for per year), Skywater aims to generate enough revenue to make the entire school financially self-sustainable by year 3. We will do so by collecting an excess of 170,000 liters of rainwater through the roof and, if necessary, one extra collection unit on the schools property and selling our product to local commercial partners. Skywater will thus not only address the water crisis, but will furthermore alleviate the financial burden of the school, allowing the school to provide low-cost, high-quality education for girls in the Ullapara region. Most of the established rainwater-harvesting initiatives have been implemented in Dhaka and larger cities; Skywater presents a new model that is catered towards rural schools and markets. Moreover, Skywater will incorporate an educational component with the goal of educating the girls about safe drinking water practices, providing them with the necessary tools to recognize safe drinking water and to purify rainwater themselves at home. We believe Skywater is unique in that it maintains a very close and exclusive relationship with the Circle of Women School in Ullapara. We are not a large NGO or multinational corporation that seeks to implement a one-size-fits-all solution to Bangladeshs water crisis, but rather aim to develop a rainwater-harvesting and distribution system that is tailored to our school and will have a far-reaching impact on the girls education and future lives. Environmental Impact This project will reduce the environmental impact of our school in providing water in reusable containers instead of low grade plastic bottles like those coming from Dhaka that contribute to the massive landfills around the world. We hope to improve the health conditions within the school and larger community both long term and short term. Surface water sources are a high risk for bacteria contamination and the ground water is contaminated with high levels of arsenic. Our model for rainwater harvesting provides us with little risk of contamination and the potential to scale our business to the entire region and beyond.

Financing We have calculated that set-up costs for this business plan will amount to approximately $10,551. This calculation takes into consideration costs of storage construction, maintenance, transportation, delivery, utilities and other general expenses. This does not however include costs of construction of the school nor costs of the property that the school is on. When we account for teacher and headmaster salaries of $1,700 for the first year, this brings total first year expenses for the school to $12,251. Based upon our estimations of monthly rainfall in the region, we predict that we will be able to collect 230,000 liters of water per month. Of this amount, 60,000 liters will be set aside for use by the school. The remaining 170,000 liters will be sold to the local community. This amounts to 14,166 liters per month. The water will be sold in 20 liter jugs for $6.00 per jug; therefore an anticipated 708 jugs are to be sold and distributed each month. This will result in $4,250 in sales each month for a total of 51,000 each year. Due to set-up costs, profit in the eleven months will be negative. However, our estimates demonstrate that by the end of Year 1, the school will be profitable. Yearly expenses for Years 2 and 3 are estimated to be $38,471 and $39,846 respectively. However, after Year 3 when the school has demonstrated its capacity to be self-sustainable we expect the government to grant it MPO status, at which point the government will then be responsible for paying 90% of the salaries for the school. This will greatly reduce the expenses of the school such that in Years 4 and 5 we expect total expenses to have come down to $23,188.14 and $23,739.29 respectively.