Makewater's 2023 Retrospective and Future Plans
In an insightful interview, Ryan Beltran, the visionary founder of MakeWater, shared a wealth of information about the organization's impactful journey throughout 2023. As MakeWater celebrated its 5th year as a non-profit, Ryan reflected on the remarkable milestones achieved, the challenges overcome, and the inspiring projects that defined the year. Offering a glimpse into the rewarding moments and future plans, the interview delves into the heart of MakeWater's mission for water education. Join us as we explore the profound insights provided by Ryan Beltran, capturing the essence of MakeWater's dedication to making a positive impact on our planet through innovation and technology.
Q1: Looking back at 2023, what were the key milestones and achievements for MakeWater?
The biggest one for me is our new kit that we are starting to build with micro bits. I want to give a big thank you to Youth Code Jam, another nonprofit here in San Antonio who suggested that we try out the microbit. They are pretty simple to use, it has buttons and a LED screen you can code really easily. This was like an ‘’a-ha moment’’, but they didn’t work right away and it wasn’t easy to just switch over. I had to do a lot of tinkering with different types of hardware to go with the microbit, and worked on having enough power for the electro-coagulation purifiying process. So that’s where I built a setup with the motor driver shield inside and USB power. I just made a box to make it look nicer. So that’s one of the big things from last year.
Micro bit kits
I think also building up our new website that’s going to launch this year was one of the milestones as it really took a lot of work and adjustments in 2023. Another milestone is the middle school curriculum and programming, which coincided really well with the micro bits. There’s going to be some new state standards for middle schools that involve technology and we are at the right place at the right time to be able to offer programming that match these new standards. We had our first middle school class where we learned a lot of what works with this new curriculum with these microbits. We’re also going to try a loaning method where we’ll provide classroom sets to the teachers so that they don’t have to go out and buy the kits. The classroom sets will be loaned for students to work on, and they can send it back when the class is over.
Another huge milestone is our partnership with Duckie Design LLC founded by Jessica Paz, which is based in Texas where we’re going to work on professional development for teachers and share with them how to implement our programming in schools, so they can get professional development credit hours.
The last milestone is the Bidet Revolution initiative. We got funded by Nouns DAO for the project of bringing bidets to communities by giving them to those who are interested in using them. The idea is to see if they can save money in the home by reducing toilet paper usage while increasing hygiene and also reducing local infrastructure cost by less wipes going down the drain. Bidets are pretty big all around the world and this is one of those things where it’s gonna take up some sort of big push for bidets to ever really be a thing in the United States. You don’t see them at very often here and we thought if we could find a way to give them away, partner with sponsors, water utilities where they might get a return on their investment through water education but also reduce strain on their infrastructure that could be a backdoor way to getting bidets to become a thing in the United States. Like I said, we got funded for the pilot from the Nouns, a WEB3 crypto project that funds public goods and ideas like this. So, that was another huge one last year and I would say a big part of last year was setting us up for this year.
Q2: Every journey comes with its set of challenges. What were some of the challenges MakeWater encountered in 2023, and how were they addressed?
We had some challenges with our website- I don’t know if anybody went to visit our website, but it just wasn’t quite where we wanted it and it didn’t have a good flow. I would have talks with new collaborators and they’d say ‘’I went to your website but couldn’t quite figure out what you do.’’ This is why we started to work on setting up a new site. Actually, we had made a new website about a year ago but it just never quite got to where we liked it to be, so we’re really excited about the new release. I think it’s gonna be a better resource for educators, collaborators and donors. The website lays the foundation for the rest of the organization. If anyone wants to work with us and they visit our website- if the representation is not cohesive then everything else kind of falters so l feel very excited to match our website to the ecosystem and how we feel about our projects and programs.
Q3: What has been the most rewarding aspect for you personally as the founder of MakeWater in the past year?
Let’s see- there’s so many things that come to mind, but I think the bidet project was really fun. That’s because it was one of those ideas where we didn’t know if we were going to get it, but it had this element of curiosity, fun and ‘’what if’’. Again, it was a challenging project to get funding and that’s what I like about the Nouns community- when you have an idea, you can pitch it. The preparation took some time, we reached out to different people, got their feedback on how they felt about the cost, how they felt about the project itself and we made a video which was very fun. I love making videos, and I don’t get to do enough of it, so it felt rewarding for the project to pass and succeed. We actually just got the news that a water utility has accepted our request to collaborate on this. Again, thanks to Jessica Paz from Duckie Design for her contributions to this. MakeWater is all about collaboration of water, technology, education and the Bidet Revolution was sort of cherry on top. It made us very happy and excited.
Q4: Looking ahead, what are MakeWater's key priorities and plans for the coming year or beyond?
I’m excited for 2024, it seems like a year of action. I kind of laughed a little bit because I thought that last year was gonna be that. I had set up a lot of things thinking they were robust but were actually more in the pilot stage. We were trying to widen the reach of the envelope kits, we know that they fit well with elementary and then they also fit really well as an introduction to what we do as an at home activity. With the microbits, I feel like this year we’re poised to just be better, have consistent and sustainable revenue, which is something that’s always been sort of a tough thing for any organization or even a business. Finding that flow of constant work and collaboration is crucial. This year we have a couple professional developments in line to be done in upcoming months and we want to reach more educators and students. Our website is going to be a resourceful place so more people can come and check us out and participate- which I’m really excited for. We’ve got a lot of projects set up, so that we can really start building an ecosystem and have continuous evolving relationships with other nonprofits, educators, and students like we had intended years ago. Also, this year is our 5th year as a nonprofit and we’re feeling particularly excited for that too!
