{"id":675,"date":"2019-08-12T22:54:58","date_gmt":"2019-08-12T22:54:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.waterforpeople.org\/?p=675"},"modified":"2026-02-19T09:11:26","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T16:11:26","slug":"prosperity-through-poop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.waterforpeople.org\/es\/prosperity-through-poop\/","title":{"rendered":"Prosperidad a trav\u00e9s de la caca"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

John overcame poverty through poop businesses.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s right, you read that correctly.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"My parents\nwere very poor,\" John says. \"I tried to go to school but my uniforms were so\ntorn that I looked almost naked. Friends would laugh at me, and I decided to\nstop school.\"<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Without\nfinishing his formal education, John had to jump from job to job. \"I tried\ndifferent jobs, some of which if I mentioned here you would think I am lying,\"\nhe says. He did recall a few though: herding goats, cultivating tobacco, hauling\nfirewood. But nothing consistent or that paid well enough to sustain a decent\nstandard of living for himself and his family. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then he\ndiscovered construction. A mason in his village took John in as his assistant\nduring a project in the city of Blantyre, Malawi. But after that initial\nproject, finding construction jobs wasn\u2019t easy, until the chief in his\ncommunity announced they were looking for masons to be trained in sanitation\nbusinesses. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

John was desperate, so he signed up.      <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the training, conducted by Water For People and a local partner,\nHygiene Village Project, John learned to build latrines and market his\nbusiness. His first marketing strategy was to write his phone number on every\nlatrine he built so customers could easily contact him if they needed more help\nin the future \u2013 a move that soon paid off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

John opened his sanitation shop in Blantyre, and before long he was able\nto expand to the capital city of Lilongwe. He went on building latrines, slowly\ngrowing his business and hiring employees. Then he discovered pit-emptying\nservices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Pit latrines like the ones John builds fill up with waste, and\nbecause space is limited in urban Blantyre, households have to empty their\nlatrines rather than build new ones. John saw this demand for pit emptying, and\nadding this service to his sanitation portfolio turned out to be a lucrative\ndecision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"At first people used to laugh at me for emptying fecal sludge, but\ntoday the same people who were laughing at me are now working for me!\" John\nsays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Between his two shops, John manages seven employees. At the shops, his\nattendants record all the details of prospective customers \u2013 many who call\nbecause he wrote his phone number on their latrine when he built it. \"Every\nmorning I check in and make follow-up calls,\" John says. \"Sometimes, customers\nwho have my number call me directly. My cell phone is on 24 hours [a day], I do\nnot switch it off.\"<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The day before emptying a latrine, John goes through a step-by-step\nchecklist. He visits customers\u2019 homes to assess the status of the latrine and\nthe environment around it. He plans where to park the transport vehicle and\ndetermine if his equipment will fit in the latrine without removing its roof.\nHe makes sure the owner has water readily available so they can clean the\nsurroundings after emptying the latrine. Finally, he goes to the Blantyre City\nCouncil to pay the dumping fee and pays the vehicle hire fees to the local Pit\nEmptiers Association. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The next day, John and his employees are ready to empty the latrine, removing\nthe wastewater and sludge 20-liter buckets at a time, bringing those to the 200-liter\nbarrels in the transport vehicle, which takes them to the local sewage\ntreatment plant for disposal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"In 2012, I used to empty two latrines a month, but now I am emptying\nmore than 15 latrines per month,\" John says. Between the latrine building and\npit-emptying, John\u2019s profits have grown to over $1,100 per month, allowing him\nto provide for his wife and three children and continue investing in his\nbusiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This business that most people turn up their noses at \u2013 literally and\nfiguratively \u2013 has changed John\u2019s life completely. He went from being the\nlaughingstock of his school to being a respected and innovative businessman. His\nsanitation business changed everything for him, and he\u2019s not stopping yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"I have huge plans,\" John says. \"I want to open sanitation shops in\nall the districts of Malawi so that my services are easily accessible.\"<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a big goal, but we don\u2019t doubt John will make it happen. Onward to prosperity\u2026through poop. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John super\u00f3 la pobreza a trav\u00e9s de los negocios de las excretas.
\nAs\u00ed es, lo le\u00edste correctamente.
\n\u201cMis padres eran muy pobres\u201d, dice John. \u201cIntent\u00e9 ir a la escuela, pero mis uniformes estaban tan rotos que parec\u00eda casi desnudo. Mis amigos se re\u00edan de m\u00ed, y decid\u00ed dejar la escuela\u201d.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":1747,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sanitation","category-malawi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waterforpeople.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waterforpeople.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waterforpeople.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waterforpeople.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waterforpeople.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=675"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.waterforpeople.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18860,"href":"https:\/\/www.waterforpeople.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675\/revisions\/18860"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waterforpeople.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.waterforpeople.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waterforpeople.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.waterforpeople.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=675"}],"curies":[{"name":"gracias","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}