Project Stats
Start Date
2014
Scale & Scope
500 schools
Target Population
150,000 children
2016 Budget
$55,924
2017 Budget
$26,063
Estimated Completion
2017
Current Progress
11%
Strategic Exit
2018
Bangladesh is the size of Kansas, but with the population of Russia. It is the 8th largest country of the world in terms of population, yet among the poorest.
164,700,000
Between now and 2050, Bangladesh’s cities will add nearly 100 million people
Convince the world’s largest NGO to steal our model.
2014
500 schools
150,000 children
$55,924
$26,063
2017
11%
2018
14,399,000
115,200/sq mi
It makes sense to centralize our work in Dhaka, the capitol city: 4,000 slum neighborhoods with 3.5 million residents justify our attention. As the second fastest-growing city on the planet—as well as the 9th largest country by population—the term “urban growth” takes on entirely new meaning. If scale can be proven in the poorest communities of Dhaka, it can be replicated in other cities across Bangladesh, South Asia, and various other parts of the world.
Splash aims to leverage the vast resources, expertise and social capital of BRAC—the world’s largest NGO by number of employees—rather than to start from scratch as a comparatively fledgling actor. With more than 20 years of service and in exess of 100,000 staff in Bangladesh alone (yes, 100,000!), BRAC is eminently capable, competent, well placed, and networked in every region of the country. Yet they desire to make an organizational shift to better target services for the urban poor– which is where Splash comes in.
In 2013, Splash was invited by BRAC to become their first external partner in water programs: Splash will design urban water interventions, co-design hygiene interventions with BRAC, and BRAC will design sanitation interventions focused on schools for the poorest children in Dhaka. The Splash goal is to share internal knowledge, networks, tech transfer, design, monitoring and evaluation, such that BRAC can take the Splash model to scale and Splash can exit strategically.
In the end, if our work is about real scale and sustainability, then allowing our core models to be plagiarized by one of the biggest NGOs in the world only makes sense.
Dhaka is the most densely populated city in the world; 5x the density of New York City.