crowdSPRING Community Gives Back with Branding for Global Sanitation Non-Profit gather

At crowdSPRING, we feel very fortunate to participate in such a vibrant community of talented creatives. It’s the work we do as a collective that makes the greatest impact. But we also value our broader, global community, and feel it’s important to make an impact there, as well.

That’s part of why we launched our Give Back program back in 2008. The crowdSPRING creatives agreed to offer up their services on a voluntary basis to worthy non-profits and charitable groups at no cost to the organizations, while we agreed to waive all fees and assist in the setup and promotion of their projects. The idea was that if branding and marketing matter and these organizations are doing good work, we wanted to contribute in the best way we could. Thus, the Give Back program was born.

And we’re thrilled to announce that the crowdSPRING community’s next Give Back project is to brand UK non-profit gather. This group is working to make sure underprivileged communities across the world have access to something folks in many Western nations take for granted: a toilet.

An ever-growing health crisis

In many developing nations, sanitation systems are in a woeful state at best and entirely absent at worst, particularly in more remote areas. It is estimated that 2.6 billion people — more than one-third of the world’s population — do not have sufficient access to a working toilet. This is often directly linked to lack of infrastructure and clean water sources, and the consequences can be dire, particularly for children. As many as 5,000 kids worldwide die every day from diseases and conditions linked to this inadequacy.

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Example of a Kenyan shared pit latrine
Image Source: wsup.com

Luckily, great strides have been made in technology that is bringing access to clean water and toilets to areas. It’s becoming more affordable and easier to build. But the problem has been scaling. As communities consolidate and grow, their sanitation and waste management needs are growing, too, in both size and sophistication. And while rudimentary solutions are certainly an improvement over no access to all to such resources, the more efficient and effective solution is one that provides for long-term and far reaching access.

In order for that to happen, the brilliant minds tackling the issue need access to data. And that’s where gather comes in.

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Enabling sanitation solutions

The non-profit launched earlier this year with the goal of finding an effective way to build toilets and waste management systems to serve the most marginalized people. As they got down to business, though, they found that a lack of centralized information on existing infrastructure and resources was a major handicap to durable progress.

“In March, we met with more than 25 sanitation providers in Kenya and Uganda, and discovered that this lack of data was a universal problem,” explains gather Co-Director John Peter Archer. “That was when we decided to pivot away from toilet construction towards building an online platform.”

And that’s exactly what they’re doing: gathering data, people, and ideas to improve urban sanitation.

 

toileteffect-photo-kidsOrganizing efforts to bring clean water access is crucial.
Image source: gather

 

Collaborating with the world’s most renowned mapping organizations, leading sanitation providers, pioneering data scientists, and luminaries at Google, gather is developing a platform that will provide users with accurate maps pinpointing the location and functionality of individual toilets, layered with key data on communities, infrastructure, and health concerns. The system will allow sanitation providers, regulators, and funders to contribute and access vital information for the improvement and expansion of their services, enabling effective planning and progress tracking as they seek to extend sanitation and waste management access to under-served communities.

What gather needs now is branding that will allow them to take things to the next level.

Designing a way forward

To give them the image they’ll need to build their community and attract financial support, gather has launched a logo design project on crowdSPRING under the Give Back program. They’re looking for a logo to represent a dynamic, trustworthy organization looking to disrupt global sanitation efforts through empowerment, and we can think of no better group of talented professionals to tackle this challenge than the crowdSPRING creatives.

As is the case with all crowdSPRING projects, participation in this is absolutely voluntary. There are no monetary awards for winners of this logo design project, but crowdSPRING will spotlight the winning submissions and offer the opportunity for those creatives to suggest other non-profits for the next Give Back project. This is our way of making a difference, and we can’t wait to see what you come up with!

Click here to view the gaher logo design project

We encourage everyone to find ways to help worthy causes and others in need. Thank you – from our entire community!

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