Abundant Water

Empower Inc is a Sydney-based not for profit organisation with a mission to enable rural entrepreneurs to build self-reliant communities. We are passionate about working in collaboration with social organisations, government institutions and businesses to holistically enable community-driven visions for change. We are currently working on a project in rural Malawi and scoping project possibilities in Northern Sri Lanka.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdCP22OhAos

Our ethos involves an asset-based approach to development that centres on the inherent capacity of individuals, the power of collaboration and working with natural systems. Integral to this is the adoption of more sustainable entrepreneurial solutions as opposed to charitable hand outs. Our aspiration as an organisation is to be in essence, redundant to each community we work with within 5 years of involvement and for them to serve as change agents to their wider communities.

The four core pillars of our projects focus on:
a) A 5 year community vision and an inclusive village development committee.
b) Access to affordable sustainable/appropriate technologies.
c) Access to rural finance for small and medium scale enterprises.
d) Capacity building in the areas of permaculture, leadership, social entrepreneurship, business development, healthcare and sanitation.

Our collaboration with Zatuba Village to date has involved enabling access to lighting through solar lanterns, business development training, permaculture workshops and a community bank pilot.

We are also excited to announce that we are in partnership with Abundant Water to explore the possibility of local potters in and around Zatuba Village adopting their clay-pot filter technology. This would provide a cost effective method of water purification to prevent water borne diseases such as diarrhoea, cholera and dysentery while supporting local artisans.

Village children

Making compost