Organizations: How to help communities access services and income?

The lack of sanitation substantially affects women, who are often the breadwinners in the household. Can you imagine living without a toilet? The woman and her child live sick and often do not know why. The lack of sanitary sewage is the first aspect for the illness of her child.

A program to train women from Ela Faz, a startup that trains and inserts women in the labor market to become plumbers, can generate several opportunities for them to generate income, where local utilities or construction companies can hire them, third parties, and families that need the services, too. An infrastructure work that is being done for sanitation needs to be connected to the house and this work needs to be paid for by the owner of the residence who often cannot afford it. Making a micro-credit available would help, so that families are able to access the sewerage system, reform the bathroom or even build them, because many don't have a bathroom.

The water supply utility has its service ended from the door out, so it needs an awareness of companies to see that the social need is met in a greater plenitude also for the perpetuity of the business. The executive of a company needs to understand his role in society beyond giving a return to his shareholder. What's the point of making an investment if I know that the family won't be able to pay for the return on it, so the management needs to find ways that make it possible for the benefit generated by its service to be paid for. It has to be viable and economically responsible, and for this it needs effort, strategy, and long-term thinking, and in sanitation it is very clear how to implement an income generation project through training. The woman learns how to install water and sewage connected to the concessionaire's network, then she can be hired by the company or its suppliers and even provide services for her community and other households.

The regulatory framework of sanitation since 2020 has enabled the entry of private investors, with the BNDES playing an important role in structuring projects that were bid out, providing mass contracting and moving the economy in a chain way.

To start a project that also focuses on social issues, it is necessary to build a relationship with the communities, starting by offering quality service, thinking about meeting the needs. So you need to know who to talk to in the communities to understand what the demand of this community is, and in this dialog, establish a commitment that besides the inconvenience of installing the construction work, it will generate benefits, and one of them is income generation. It is also important that this person from the community, the leader, has a good relationship with the public power for a better planning for the construction work as well.

Why work with women? The issue of gender diversity is the first to be taken, as an awareness that it is not normal not to have female representation in the industry, in construction. There are many difficulties that women face and need support, such as maternity and career preventing them from being hired or promoted. And when you start to implement the female empowerment in the company's culture, it opens the way for gender diversity, race precedent, sexual orientation, people with disabilities, for a diverse and inclusive company, creating an environment of innovation and generating greater engagement for employees. If the company does not have this perception of the need for what is happening outside, there is no way it will be able to have who it wants to serve.

Thinking about sustainability as a long-term business, foreseeing the country's growth in sanitation, in which we will need people, then investing in training, diversity, and inclusion is not only the right thing to do, but it is also feasibly economical to do.

Lívia Viana – CEO da Ela Faz Tecnologia