Majik Water is a KCIC client who manufactures a machine that extracts clean drinking water from the atmosphere. Their innovation can be of great benefit to Kenya, a water-scarce country in which only 9 out of 55 public water service providers provide continuous water supply. As there is 6 times as much water in the air as in all the rivers in the world, the atmosphere is an underutilized resource that Majik Water is tapping into.
Related article: Mitigating water scarcity with evolved technology
Majik Water to donate system to the Ark Children’s Home
Majik Water has recently entered into a mutually beneficial partnership with The Ark Children’s Home outside of Thika, Kenya. Specifically, they have a 3-month agreement with The Ark that began in February, wherein The Ark is able to use the machine for free while Majik Water conducts research on it. Once the research is finished, company founder Beth Koigi says that they will be donating the machine to the children’s home.
“Seeing how dire the water situation is at The Ark, we decided that the best thing to do would be to let them retain the machine once our agreement is over. They are benefiting so much from it already,” Ms. Koigi explains.
The Ark Children’s Home: providing hope for orphaned, needy children
The Ark was founded by former schoolteacher Caroline Gichuhi 11 years ago. The home houses 43 children ages 1-17 who are either orphans or were abandoned or abused by their parents. Some of them have terminal illnesses such as HIV.
Although all of the children come to The Ark from court orders, the home does not receive public financial assistance. They also have no permanent donors and have survived for 11 years through well-wishers and one-time donations- or, as Ms. Gichuhi says, “miracles.” Through these miracles, The Ark provides the children with housing, food, counseling, and the ability to go to school.
A contaminated water source runs dry
Ms. Gichuhi says that they have no other access to clean water apart from the Majik Water system. The only other nearby water source is a government project that was solely meant for farming because it contains chemical contaminants. Even boiling the water does not eliminate these contaminants- and, as a result, some of the children were falling ill.
However, this water source has been dry since December. Their only other option was to buy water tanks that they could not afford. As a result, Ms. Gichuhi says that the Majik Water machine “has been very, very, very, very helpful… in fact it is our only hope.”
Majik Water benefits from research conducted at children’s home
The machine in use at the home generates 50 liters of clean water per day through extracting water from the atmosphere and then filtering it. The specific research being conducted is on technical aspects of the machine (how much energy it uses, how it works in different humidity levels, etc.) as well as people’s use of it (how the water tastes, how the machine has helped them, etc.).
In addition to providing a much-needed water solution for a worthy cause, Majik Water is able to further refine its product and market through the research. This will ultimately help them when scaling up their business- and thus expand their impact even further.
