We recently connected with Joelle Gordon and have shared our conversation below.
Joelle, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?
My Mission… I was working at a large investment bank in Calgary, Canada; and frankly I wasn’t a great investment banker, in part because I was happier teaching people about money and investments than selling the investments. I wasn’t where I should be, and I knew it. So, I started to look at ways to use her finance background for good.
Mohammed Yunus’ microfinance movement was getting a lot of traction with the international development community, and the combination of banking with training and support for women who had small businesses was right up my alley. I started to read everything that she could on the topic and enrolled in the Bankers Without Borders webinar series as well as completing a Professional Certificate in Micro-Finance with the Micro-Finance Association.
While at a Results Canada Christmas party that December, I met a Rotarian, with the Calgary West Rotary Club. He was talking about Liberia, a small West African country that was recovering from over 20 years of civil war. When he mentioned that the Rotary had just approved a grant for $250,000.00 to a local Liberian micro-credit organization, I was intrigued. He then asked if I would be interested in going to Liberia, to work with the NGO to establish the systems for granting loans and collecting the payments. It was like a Christmas wish come true! Lots of research and two months later, I kissed her son, and the rest of her family good-bye and took a taxi to the airport for a three-month contract West Africa. Next stop, Monrovia, Liberia!
Landing in Monrovia two days later, felt like coming home.
Working with the market women of Liberia, teaching them how to make and save more money was the most rewarding experience of my life. There was only one glitch. Every week women were coming to pull out all of their savings because someone was sick, someone was hurt in the hospital, or someone had died.
Here is an important thing I learned about poverty. When an individual who lives in poverty begins to make more money, they are expected to pay for the needs of others. This is not limited to family members. Indeed, it includes friends, and community members. The result is the inability for people to work their way out of poverty when others are holding you back.
I thrive on solving problems and I decided to look into why people were sick and dying. Eight times out of ten the cause of sickness and dying was unclean water. Frankly, this seemed crazy. There were so many people and organizations working in Liberia to provide water to the people who needed it the most. It turned out that the reason people were getting sick, was the rain. Due to the 280 inches (7.1 meters) of rain that falls over 8 months of the year, Liberia has a very high-water table. That excessive gift of rain limits the earth’s ability to filter the water into potable quality. Also, because Liberia was struggling to recover from decades of war and destruction to the civil infrastructure, the ground was polluted with biological and chemical pollution because of the lack of solid and liquid waste management. The result, wells at a depth of less that 100 feet (30 meters) were no longer potable during the rainy season. Unfortunately, hand-dug wells are the popular low-cost choice for water provision.
It seemed the height of irony that a country with more than 2.1 trillion gallons (7.8 trillion liters) of clean water falling from the sky every year; yet no one in the country could drink clean water from a tap in their home!
My mission is to provide clen drinking water to all who want it.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
My story begins in Canada in 2009. I was working at a large investment bank in Calgary. I was not a great investment banker, in part because I was happier teaching people about money and investments than selling the investments. I was not where I should be, and I knew it. I started to look at ways to use my finance background for good. Mohammed Yunus’s microfinance movement was getting a lot of traction with the international development community and the combination of banking with training and support for women who had small businesses was right up my alley. I read everything I could on the topic and enrolled in the Bankers Without Borders webinar series as well as completing a Professional Certificate in Micro-Finance with the Micro-Finance Association.
While at a Results Canada Christmas party that December, Jo met a Rotarian, with the Calgary West Rotary Club. He was talking about Liberia, a small West African country that was recovering from 20 years of civil war. When he mentioned that the Rotary had just approved a grant for $250,000.00 to a local Liberian micro-credit organization, I was intrigued. He asked if I would be interested in going to Liberia, to work with the NGO to establish the systems for granting loans and collecting the payments. It was like a Christmas wish come true! A lot of research and two months later, I kissed my son, and the rest of my family and took a taxi to the airport for a three-month contract West Africa. Next stop, Monrovia, Liberia!
Landing in Monrovia two days later, felt like coming home.
Working with the market women of Liberia, teaching them how to make and save more money was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. There was only one glitch. Every week women were coming to me to pull out all of their savings because someone was sick, someone was hurt in the hospital, or someone had died.
Here is an important thing I learned about poverty. When an individual who lives in poverty begins to make more money, they are expected to pay for the needs of others. This is not limited to family members. Indeed, it includes friends, and community members. The result is the inability for people to work their way out of poverty when others are holding you back.
I thrive on solving problems and decided to look into why people were sick and dying. Eight times out of ten the cause of sickness and dying was unclean water. Frankly, this seemed crazy. There were so many people and organizations working in Liberia to provide water to the people who needed it the most. The reason people were getting sick, was the rain. Due to the 280 inches (7.1 meters) of rain that falls over 8 months of the year, Liberia has a very high-water table. That excessive gift of rain limits the earth’s ability to filter the water into potable quality. Also, because Liberia was struggling to recover from decades of war and destruction to the civil infrastructure, the ground was polluted with biological and chemical pollution because of the lack of solid and liquid waste management. The result, wells at a depth of less that 100 feet (30 meters) were not potable during the rainy season and unfortunately, hand-dug wells are the popular low-cost choice for water provision.
It seemed the height of irony that a country with more than 2.1 trillion gallons (7.8 trillion liters) of clean water falls from the sky every year yet no one in the country could drink clean water from a tap in their home!
One day I called home to chat with her son, and the conversation came around to the topic of rain and lack of clean drinking water. “Do I have to get a rain barrel for everyone in Liberia?” I exclaimed. He responded with an eye roll “Mom, if you seriously want to help people, you need to think bigger. Infrastructure needs to be part of the solution. Check your email in an hour. I will send you a solution.” That solution was a roof (in sections) over the road that would collect the rain that would otherwise wash out the road. That was a bit too much of a leap so Jo decided to start with simple rainwater harvest (RWH) systems that would give anyone access to clean drinking water.
After two years of learning all of the facets of clean drinking water provision, I met the man who would become my husband and partner in this magnificent dream of providing clean drinking water, sanitation and hygiene, using rainwater harvesting, to everyone who wants them.
Abundant Rain, Liberia Inc. is now West Africa’s leading expert rainwater harvesting systems.
We completed our pilot project in Rockhill Community in, November 2019, that placed individual RAIN 1000 systems on 35 homes, amore than 50 schools and an orphanage. The systems continue to provide clean drinking water, piped into the buildings. The challenge is the cost of the systems and necessary maintenance. Which lead us to the problem of all of the plastic waste (bottles and sachets), most of which is a direct result of not having access to clean drinking water in the first place. Plastic is a water problem, and water is a plastic problem.
So, Abundant Rain created a division, called Abundant Recycling, that builds and manages recycling depots, in communities so that dwellers can trade plastic and glass waste for clean drinking water in an AquaBrick. The depots are designed to capture the maximum amount of rainwater which is then filtered and stored until accessed. The credits accumulated from recycling can also be used to access safe sanitation and bathing area (particularly for women) within the depot compound. The recyclables from the depots are used to make interlocking building blocks we call R BLOK, that are used in the construction of RAIN depots and in the manufacture of the next generation of our RAIN water systems. RAIN Depots for plastic and glass recycling provides a circular solution for water, sanitation and hygiene while laying the foundation for clean communities and alternative building materials.
We install clean water systems on ten clinics a year, while teaching community members about water and how to keep it safe for consumption.
We have also designed a RAIN school, built with the R BLOK, that collects rainwater for use in the school, and excess water can be sold to the community, thereby generating revenue to cover school operating expenses.
Has your business ever had a near-death moment? Would you mind sharing the story?
2023 was a difficult year for Liberia and, by extension, Abundant Rain. Grants that were to be awarded were put on hold as there was an election scheduled for October and the incumbent President, former soccer player George Weah, was up for re-election. The international community was not supportive of his administration. New foreign direct investment and donor funds were put on hold until the elections were over. We had really been depending upon two large grants that we had been promised. They would have funded the building of the RAIN Station/Recycling Depots that would provide community members a place to take plastic and glass for recycling credit that can be exchanged for clean drinking water. One kilogram of recycling is equal to one liter of water.
No grants, and no new large contracts meant that when the rent came due in June I had to cash in some of what remained of my retirement to pay for our staff and a place to work. We ended up having to break our lease and move to a much smaller location for the office. Unfortunately, the new space is too small to re-establish the factory.
Subsequently, unsanctioned individuals from the Ministry of Labor were threatening to fine Abundant Rain for alleged poor labor practices, and throw me in jail for the same. I was so tired, that I was ready to go. That is saying a lot when you think of African prisons! It was just another shake-down by a corrupt group. I was ready to close it all and go back to Canada. Thankfully I do not love the cold, so I stuck it out a little bit longer.
Our salvation is the continued work that we do with other recyclers. One of which, has provided a place for use to build our factory, right next to theirs. They use the HDPE, LDPE and polypropylene to make diesel and gasoline. The synergies in our businesses has provided us a factory location while reducing his cost of plastic and transportation.
As well, the election proved fruitful. A new administration, and the subsequent improvement of outlook by the foreign investment community an d donors has seen up pick up where we left off last year. The time in between has provided me the opportunity to review operating and financial systems which results in my being better prepared for all of the changes that will come when the RAIN Station is up and running, and the developing partners can see the solution in action.
We start to build our Rain Station in the first week of May, 2024. We anticipate that we will be fully operational by July 15, 2024.
Okay – so how did you figure out the manufacturing part? Did you have prior experience?
When I first moved to Liberia all I knew about water was that if I turned on the faucet, water would come out. If it didn’t work there was always someone to call. After twenty+ years of civil war entire generations of trades people were wiped out, and the institutional knowledge that was their legacy ceased to exist. We had to start from point zero.
Abundant Rain designs, manufactures and installs rainwater harvesting systems using aluminum gutters we manufacture on site and R BLOKS that we make from combining 20 PET bottles + 20 water sachets + 20 glass bottles/jars+ cement+ rainwater. I did not have a single clue how to make any of these things before we started Abundant Rain. In fact for the past eight years, every project we have completed was the first time we had ever designed that particular system. I will be forever grateful to YouTube and its DIY content providers for teaching our entire team how to do what we do.
Liberia does not have the infrastructure and industry for us to farm out the manufacturing of our systems. We do purchase the plumbing and electrical materials (they are imported).
We have a policy of allocating 20% of our budget to R & D and training. Not a single member of the Abundant Rain team had any experience with RWH or BLOK making before we started. Experimentation was the only way to learn. While it is definitely expensive the ROI is exponential as it creates a barrier to entry for potential competitors. Many have tried, and we eventually receive a call to repair what the ‘other guy’ tried to build.
We are constantly learning. Myself, I have become a little bit of a structural engineer. I have a basic understanding of construction that allows me to create a RWH system design with an engineer to sign off on the plan.
Contact Info:
- Website: abundantrain.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/abundantrainlib/
- Facebook: https://web.facebook.com/AbundantRainLIB/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelle-gordon-30351b10/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@smileitsraining
- Other: Abundant Recycling https://web.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100078544737555 Abundant Rain https://www.linkedin.com/company/abundant-rain-liberia/