A recent article from National Geographic profiles Kathy’s story. As a Harvard student, she spent a year teaching in Uganda at the young age 19. It was there she experienced the problems of impure water that made her and her host family sick several times.
That experience inspired her to devise a better, more accessible way for people in Uganda to filter their water. Her solution involved first designing a ceramic water filter, and then finding a way to manufacture the filters in Uganda. Keep in mind, she did all this without any business experience, learning as she went.
Today, the results of Kathy and her team’s work are apparent. According to the National Geographic story: “Ku and co-founder John Kye have a full-fledged water filter factory near Kampala. Their organization, Spouts, has grown to more than 40 staffers and distributed about 14,000 ceramic filters, which remove 99.9 percent of bacteria.”
You can read the full National Geographic story here—which includes a video and interview
