Profile

Today, we are privileged to be a global network of people aiming to provide alternative methods of funding causes –– alternative to traditional funding methods (e.g. public funds, overseas development assistance, individual donors, foundations and CSR).

Our story began in 1996. 

Back then our founder saw, first-hand, the difficulty some villages had in finding clean water. While on his first assignment –– supervising and managing civil works on a road project –– as an employee of a consulting engineering firm. He saw that quarries left behind collected contaminated rainwater –– these queries were the poor villagers’ best source of water.

He brought his engineering skills to bear on solving the pressing need for clean water close to home. Rainwater Harvesting seemed the ideal solution. He searched for the best methods for rainwater harvesting in low-income settlements.

He wanted a system that: 

• requires no electricity;
• needs little maintenance;
• would be kept up by village members without need for skilled labor;
• is of greatest value for building cost;
• requires low to no cost to run;
• is long lasting; and,
• is hygienic.

At end of the assignment in 2000, he resigned from the employment and founded Otung Ltd (Otung), a private company duly registered in Kenya.

The Story Continues

As a sole regional distributor of Zincalume Steel tanks with an Australia based tank manufacturer, Pioneer Water Tanks, Otung asked a secondary school to propose how they would pay for a tank by instalments. Although the school’s proposal was the best possible, it was not viable for Otung, as the cost of managing the hire purchase arrangement was higher than cost of the tank.

Therefore, Otung formed two divisions:
1.  RaHa Solutions for increasing Universal Healthcare Coverage (UHC) that includes: donating health insurance premiums to households; donating rainwater harvesting systems to villages and schools (that contain the households); protecting rainwater from pollution by donating toilets to the villages and schools; increasing doctors’ MRESENCE around the villages and schools (as doctors’ PRESENCE around villages is very low); and, donating reusable sanitary towels to girls that are in the households (this also helps girls finish school).

2. DuGut Applications for developing alternative methods of funding RaHaSolutions’ activities –– alternative to traditional funding methods (e.g. public funds, overseas development assistance, individual donors, foundations and CSR).

Folklore

RaHa is a name coined from [Ra]inwater [Ha]rvesting. RaHa’s logo features a smile (depicting ‘raha’ in swahili).

DuGut is a name coined from ‘Do Good’

Our Mission

is to develop methods of funding causes and to apply the methods in bringing UHC to those excluded from quality health care coverage.

Our UHC has 5 exceptional features:

1. Members of public, community health workers (CHWs) and nurses identify households that need health insurance premiums. Engaging CHWs and nurses in this (identification) is partly for purposes of increasing number of Frontline Health Workforce.

 2. We pay premiums on behalf of the households at a rate of one household per calendar week.

3. Members of the households don’t travel to hospitals/clinics/specialists or vice versa unless traveling is absolutely necessary.

4. We pay the CHWs and nurses.

5. In addition to the premiums, we provide to the villages and schools:

i. Water that is: of maximum capacity; as near to the consumer as possible; and, as clean as can be made possible by the best available technology –– even where we have to provide boreholes, we find boreholes: with enough volume (we give 3 year water source capacity guarantee per borehole); with the highest quality water (that competes with bottled mineral water); and, precisely in the piece of land where the consumer needs it.

ii. Reusable Sanitary Towels that are antimicrobial (intelligent towels), luxurious, soft and stretchy. They are easy to manage (30 min soaking, rinsing, squeezing and drying). They dry fast. Each of the towels can withstand at least 100 washes (assuming that a towel is washed twice in a period, 100 washes translates into 4 years of use). The antimicrobial efficacy does not deplete over time as the treatment is permanently bonded to the towels.

iii. Healthcare facility named MRESENCE Telecare™. The special functional features that are useful to each MRESENCE TeleCare™ session are:

• Unique functional capability for SWIS (See What I See) & TWIT (Touch What I Touch)
• Chat function: the therapist on one end of the remote interaction and the care giver at the other end of the interaction can use this for prescriptions.
• Native Language Chat in text and speech with automatic translation in real time. In other words, all parties in MRESENCE session each speaking a different language can converse with one another each hearing the other party’s speech in the language of their choice.
• All the multi-media interactions in a MRESENCE session is automatically recorded for review, accountability and archived as evidence for use in posterity.
• Medical instruments that are integrable with the USB Type C Port of Smartphone or Tablet, Smartphones and/or Tablet running the MRESENCE Native App for use with Android or iOS and Healthcare Service Giver and the Healthcare Service Provider.

iv. Toilets: we’ve always believed that rainwater should be protected from pollution. It’s our goal to harvest and clean stormwater for the water starved –– this starts with providing toilets upstream.

Our Members & Beneficiaries

We are the finest people with interest in manufacturing and distributing WASH equipment. Importantly, we are actionists on UHC and WASH funding issues. Our employees, who we call members, are at the heart of the RaHa Experience.

We believe in treating our beneficiaries with respect and dignity and we are proud to offer several landmark programs for our beneficiaries.

Being a Not-Only-For-Profit Business, we have always believed in the importance of building a great, enduring business that strikes a balance between profitability and a social conscience.

We nurture personal relationships and build a global network of support to create new ways to finance causes: ways that are sustainable, transparent and good for people and the planet.

Our products are designed on the backdrop of a neighbourliness –– we strive to make each neighbour benefit. As we have grown, so too has our ability to make positive impact.

As it has been from the beginning, our purpose goes far beyond profit.

We believe in the pursuit of doing good.