Collaboration Witness Complexity Day-to-day Survival Social structure Urban Adaptation Culture Creativity

Exploring the WaterPhone

Waiting for Water

Lipika (PhD candidate at TUDelft, Participatory Systems) and Ankur, Society in Alternatives in Education are exploring the possibilities of developing a WaterPhone in a collaborative research process with adolescent girls from Delhi's workers' settlements.

Water is of vital importance, without water one cannot survive. Every household needs water. It is not available freely. One can identify that women are responsible for water provision in many parts of the world as women take care of the household. These water managers spend a lot of their time collecting water, causing a barrier for many of them to join school or take up a job.

In this exploratory research, I collaborated with adolescent girls on their relation with water. We used creative research methodologies such as, storytelling and -writing. The young women received (used) mobile phones to document and map various aspects of water, such as the water infrastructure, water distribution, health related effects, the responsibility for water, purifying water, timings of fetching water and more. We started the process with conversations on how people in their neighborhood (mohalla) perceive the current water access. Next the young women used mobile phones and digital camera's to collect stories from their mohalla, by recording stories, interviews, make photos and short videos. In the next phase we will explore the possibilities of developing a WaterPhone.