Impact as Outcome

In June of this year, Caminos de Agua won the Innovation Showcase (ISHOW) Award from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) in Washington D.C. for work with Aguadapt – our new low-cost water filter platform.

For less than USD $30, Aguadapt lasts for three years, removes 99.9999% of all pathogens, attaches to universal plumbing, and is easily installed in all common containers – making it ideal for disaster relief. Most importantly, Aguadapt is a platform that can be adapted to treat regionally-specific chemical contaminants – like arsenic, lead, fluoride, and pesticides – which disproportionately affect low-income communities around the globe.

After our win in Washington D.C., we, along with other ISHOW winners from the US, Kenya, and India,  were invited this past week to New York City to pursue more opportunities with our hardware technologies. ASME facilitated a specially-tailored “bootcamp” for each of ISHOW winner. We presented our technology and received feedback and advice from experts in manufacturing, product design, intellectual property, behavioral design, investment opportunities, business structure, and so much more. We ended the day with a 2+ hour design review of our technology from industry experts. 

The next day we were invited to take part in Impact.Engineered, an annual event presented by ASME and Engineering for Change. Throughout the day, we were exposed to yet more experts from diverse backgrounds but all related to social and human-centered engineering and design to solve modern problems. 

One panelist, Michael Marinello, stated that, when designing products and technologies, we need to shift our focus from “output as outcome to impact as outcome” – meaning that we need to stop counting how many products we sell and start holding ourselves accountable to measure the social and environmental impact of these products. 

While we are already ISHOW winners and have received financial support from ASME, over the next several weeks, they will be evaluating the feedback from our “bootcamp” experts and will then determine whether or not to provide more financial and in-kind support for our social venture. However, the support and contacts we received from ASME through this process has already been a phenomenal help to visualizing the future of Aguadapt. We feel like we have been invited into a family of specialists ready and eagerly willing to help Aguadapt succeed. 

We are proud to be recognized for our work in such an important forum, and we would especially like to thank ASME for moving the needle on hardware development for the betterment of humanity.