Módulo Sanitario - Fundación Horizonte de Máxima

We, at Módulo Sanitario, work hard each day to improve the quality of life of families that live in sanitary emergency

Winning the Elevate Prize would mean that we could achieve more projects than the ones we’ve already planned for this and the upcoming year. It would mean to build a proper bathroom to more than 2800 people (650 families, the same we’ve done since we began working).

This year, one of our goals is to articulate with different institutions and NGOs in order to work together and reach more families. To do so, we need to be able to offer a cheap solution to the infrastructure problem. If we won the Elevate Prize, we would be able to buy the raw materials in scale so we can work side by side with these organizations in order to get to places we have never been to and families we have yet to meet. According to the World Health Organization, for every dollar invested in water and sanitation services, there is a 4.3 return, due to reduced health care costs for individuals and society. With the Elevator Prize we will be investing indirectly more than 1M Argentinean pesos for public health.

The original idea was born from the knowledge of my profession, Civil Engineering and my experience of volunteering in neighbourhoods. Every Sunday, when I returned home, I would take a long hot shower and I was dissatisfied to think that the family I had met and got to know those days could not do the same. I understood that it is very easy to be clean and healthy when you have all the comforts, but his is utterly different when your bathroom is 10 meters away from your house and it is very cold or rainy day. Moved by that reality and with the desire to transform it, it is that together with a group of friends we decided to put our professional skills at the service of the other and thus we organize ourselves to help a specific family. After the success of that first experience we decided to bring the solution to more families by starting the Módulo Sanitario Program within the Foundation.

The challenge that we face every day is reaching more and more people to minimize the gap in access to proper sanitation.

Can you imagine living without a toilet? Worldwide, 1 in 3 people do not have a toilet. "Módulo Sanitario" makes it possible for people to access a space to carry out hygiene tasks to prevent diseases. Ensuring access to sanitation and hygiene to families who live in vulnerable neighborhoods is of utter importance.

In Argentina, our country, more than 6 million people do not have a bathroom. The lack of access to adequate infrastructure, conditions and places to keep a good personal hygiene and to adequately handle food is a serious problem which not only deepens exclusion, but also severely affects people's health in a direct manner. Families (mainly kids) are exposed to diseases such as diarrhea, influenza, bronchospasms, urinary infections and so many more. We have built more than 600 sanitary cabins since 2015 and by giving workshops we have increased the number of families with knowledge about relevant hygiene and personal health care practices. We have achieved health benefits as well as people’s social inclusion. We have developed a replicable and scalable project. We hope to spread this to other countries all over the world by means of cooperative alliances with civil society organizations and social enterprises.

We have different constructive models which adjust to the various needs of each family. We have come up with different constructive procedures to prefabricate bathrooms and kitchens. Our solution it`s made with high quality and long-lasting sanitary and building materials. We streamline materials and we quickly assemble the sanitary cabin as well. Therefore, we don’t need experienced workers because it can be built in two days with the help of volunteers as well as the own beneficiaries’ families. We put the families at the centre. We meet the families and make a selection based on the needs we have identified together; we explain to them everything about the sanitary cabin. All the families, with the help of 7 volunteers, actively participate collaborating during the construction and so become part of the hygiene workshop. Once the construction is finished we continue to be in contact with the families. We are always available for any inconvenience they might encounter using the sanitary cabin. We visit them periodically so we can also measure the impact made on the lives of the families. Families take part in the entire implementation of the program.

Based on our experience, we have found that what families value the most are 3 fundamental things: having a bathroom inside their home, that someone is still caring for them and providing them with a concrete solution. The testimonies are consistent and abundant, they recover the hope of living.

The innovation involved in adding the bathroom to a precarious home is a social, health, and human revolution: the beneficiaries improve their quality of life, namely: better sleep; more job opportunities; school and work absenteeism declines; improvement of diseases linked to poor hygiene such as: diarrhea, stomach pain, worms in stool, weight loss, headaches, respiratory problems, colds, flu, insomnia, blood in the mouth, rashes, psoriasis, warts and fungi, genital diseases, etc.

This year we began to carry out the first surveys to measure the results in a neighbourhood where we built 100 sanitary modules. The first estimates have given us some indications of the positive impact on health as mentioned before it is worth clarifying that these first results do not have methodological rigor since they are only a small partiality of cases out of the 600 modules built. We are continuing with the survey and analysis of results.