Minhaj Chowdhury, a young Bangladeshi American has given up his comfortable job in US to establish a social enterprise in Bangladesh to provide safe drinking water in rural villages…writes Sumaiya Iqbal
The inclination to leave Bangladesh and settle abroad has been present rather strongly for the past few decades among a large number of Bangladeshi youths. Not that there is anything wrong with desiring the best for oneself, even if it was available in the more advanced countries of the world. But the number of youths who come back from abroad to work in Bangladesh and take the country forward is very low indeed.
Minhaj Chowdhury however, falls in the latter category. In fact, he was born into a Bangladeshi family in USA and was brought up there. But at 26 years of age, he works as the CEO of Drinkwell Systems, an initiative that he cofounded in Bangladesh.
Minhaj used to visit Bangladesh every year, often with other members of the family. His grandfather lost his life due to diseases stemming from unsafe drinking water. ‘It shocked and deeply saddened me to think how we never had to worry about water being fatal in the US but here in Bangladesh one in every five deaths was associated with unsafe drinking water, Minhaj says.
Inspired by the dream of an arsenic free nation, Minhaj decided to establish a business following social entrepreneurial model to help with the issue of unsafe drinking water.
The World Health Organization called it ‘the largest mass poisoning in history’ with between 33 and 77 million people in Bangladesh exposed to arsenic in drinking water. According to a study published in the medical journal ‘The Lancet’, exposure to the poisoning began when tube wells were installed throughout the country some 35 years ago. Ironic though for the measure was intended to control water-borne diseases and reduce infant mortality rates caused by consumption of surface water. For it having no colour or odour, arsenic is near impossible to detect without chemical means.
Minhaj pursued his education at Johns Hopkins University in the Public Health Department.
Throughout his first two years at college, he worked on finding a solution to the arsenic crisis and even scaled an easy to use filter with his room-mate which could be used to prevent arsenic contamination in developing regions. In 2009, while still a second year student at his university, Minhaj founded the ‘Clean Water for Peace Project’ in Bangladesh. He developed a filtering system and distributed 100 pieces in his uncle’s village in Manikganj.
‘My dream has always been to help millions with a single idea and this was my first attempt at it. I was finally helping the people in my family’s village. It proved to be quite a learning experience,’ he mentions.
However his attempt ended up with heartbreak for Minhaj as when he returned to Bangladesh after two years, he found only three out of the100 filters to be functional.
‘Maintenance was a weakling in the initial project as it did not involve the entire community’s participation. We trained one individual to maintain the filters, who was to be paid a small service fee but it didn’t work out. We realised that we needed the locals involved from the beginning and not merely in the servicing phase to sustain the project,’ he elaborates.
He did not give up. ‘I persisted to find a social business model that would survive in the Bangladeshi context,’ he adds. Receiving a Fulbright scholarship in 2011 helped Minhaj fund his continuous experiments and travels to Bangladesh where he tested a total of three more models across six villages. By 2012, he gained the knowledge needed to understand the model that would work.
In 2012, while attending a Fulbright research conference, Minhaj met Dr Arup SenGupta, a professor of Chemical Engineering at Lehigh University, USA who introduced him to a specialised water filtration technology using resin. The model was community based and recovered 99 per cent of input water, and reduced waste significantly compared to Reverse Osmosis systems. Once he learnt the technology, he had two questions: ‘How do we bring this to where it is needed the most? And how can we make it sustain effectively?’
He conveys, ‘Learning from my past experiences, we devised a system where selected organisations or individuals would be trained to become entrepreneurs themselves. They would manage the main filter and then sell the water to locals. Water for the whole month would cost around 130 takas for each household. We would also provide training to a team particularly to check up on the filters once a month with unannounced visits. They would check to see if the filter was being kept clean and properly maintained in exchange of a small service fee. Training the service providers and convincing locals to pay for water to make the project sustainable were hard challenges that we had to overcome.’ This way the system he devised would offer empowerment to locals as well.
With Dr SenGupta’s technology, Minhaj’s insight, and Mike German’s efforts, the third partner being a PhD student of SenGupta on a Fulbright in India, Drinkwell was successfully established in 2013. ‘While it was immensely exciting for me, it was also one of the most stressful years I have had till date. I would have to change my lifestyle completely to sustain the project,’ Minhaj says.
Coming from a traditional Bangladeshi family, Minhaj’s parents had hoped for their son to be a successful doctor. The news that he would have a career very different to it was not received well. ‘My family along with their support means everything to me. So it was very difficult when they responded the way they did. Stability of the career and a regular income were concerns for them and they would have preferred me avoiding the risk back then,’ he shares. He knew pursuing his dream project would mean dealing with the unpredictability of its nature but he also knew that millions could be saved if he took a leap of faith.
Gathering funds to start the project was Minhaj’s biggest challenge. ‘When Drinkwell started in 2013, I worked as a consultant at a Boston-based firm specialising in technology product development and project management. I had to spend all my weekends, holidays and the few hours at night on weekdays reaching out to as many people as possible in the hopes of finding investors,’ he says.
Minhaj’s tenacity paid off as within the span of a year, an 80,000 USD grant from Echoing Green allowed him to go all out on Drinkwell. Shortly thereafter, money started coming in from a variety of grant programmes totaling more than 750,000 USD by public, private and non-profit organisations from around the world.
Wasting no more time, Minhaj, refusing a raise, quit his very comfortable consultancy job and made his way to Bangladesh. There was no turning back. The equipment was ordered and all arrangements for deployment of filters began. However, little did Minhaj anticipate the struggles that awaited him in Bangladesh. ‘Corruption was a major set-back. Our equipment coming in from Kolkata and the US was held at the borders for a total of three months simply because we refused to pay bribes to officials. I still wouldn’t quit and stayed on throughout till we received papers of approval,’ he mentions.
And finally on March 8, 2015 the very first Drinkwell plant was deployed in Minhaj’s own village, Manikganj. Drinkwell now has five fully functioning plants in the villages of Manikganj, Faridpur, Nawabganj, Satkhira and Jhitka. Outside Bangladesh, the project is also in use in Indian villages. Future plans are underway to further expand all over Bangladesh, India and other developing regions facing the crisis of arsenic poisoning.
‘I’ve had to make a lot of sacrifices when it comes to staying close with friends and family, to have a “normal” lifestyle where I have my own address and room. But still there is nothing else I would be doing than what I am doing today,’ he asserts.
Minhaj has won multiple awards from organisations such as the US State Department, SXSW, and others. He is also a 2014 Echoing Green Fellow and a 2015 Forbes 30 Under 30 Social Entrepreneur.
Learn more about Drinkwell at www.drinkwellsystems.com.