Meet Elizabeth Clandos | Humanitarian Designer & Social Entrepreneur

We had the good fortune of connecting with Elizabeth Clandos and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Elizabeth, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
Olafilter came out of absolute necessity. It was the rainy season in rural Guatemala. The roads were washed out, there were life-threatening pathogens and parasites, and no one could deliver clean water in those conditions.

It was scary.

I remember standing in my tin-roofed, concrete-block house and trying to make a rational decision: Was I willing to risk drinking the water and getting sick? If I did get sick, could I even get to a doctor?

The pathogens—and the problems they cause—are real. Infant mortality, waterborne diseases, childhood stunting, material poverty. It’s all there, being played out in villages where people have extremely constrained incomes. And as a double injustice, they have little money and they live in countries where water filters are extremely expensive.

All of our time, energy and obsession was product-centered: to attempt to build a water filter that was robust and affordable. The business model evolved around the product and our market’s unique constraints.

What should our readers know about your business?
We are one of a few handful of companies making water filters designed for humanitarian relief and poor communities. We are definitely the smallest and the newest! To me, it’s incredibly exciting to be in this small industry, even peripherally.

In its three years, Olafiltro has evolved tremendously: products, locations, markets, countries – they have all been iterated, tested, and redesigned.

A few months ago, it made its most radical evolution yet: to return to the place of its inception and apply laser focus to the consumers and the country that sparked the company in the first place. For that reason, as I type this I am once again in a tin-roofed, concrete-block house in the middle of the rainy season in Guatemala.

Currently Olafiltro has partnered with a team of female entrepreneurs and will be training them to go house to house in order to directly reach our customer in a manner that is traditional and trusted. This transition is true to the original business concept, and three years later, we are back where we need to be.

Sometimes it is a challenge to lead an idea that is constantly evolving. I have often worried that the evolutions and iterations have made me appear fickle, or worse, incapable. But I’m grateful for the small part of me that has embraced the dynamism, who has learned from feedback, and who has been patient enough to listen.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
The perfect trip would begin and end in the historic heart of Guatemala: the colonial city of Antigua. For such a small city, there is an exciting scene here of people who work in really diverse fields.

Guatemala is the heart of the Mayan world, with customs and traditions that have remained intact through millennia. There are languages here that have been spoken for four thousand years. At times, you feel like you are walking through a living museum.

I would begin at El Bosque, a huge open air food court and brewery in the heart of an old coffee plantation. Then I would visit Indigo, which makes weavings and threads that are dyed using plants and insects harvested from the local forest. The perfect weekend visit would have to include a sunrise hike up to see the active volcano that overlooks the city!

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Effective humanitarian designs aren’t created in a vacuum. They require constant feedback and collaboration from the actual users of the products. Without a strong feedback loop and rigorous testing, you have wasted money and directionless effort, and pressing needs that remain unmet.

Getting honest and reliable feedback would have been impossible without the dedication of Melvin Chiyal Mejía and the entire Mejiía family in San Marcos la Laguna, Guatemala. Trilingual in Spanish, Mayan Kaqchikel, and English, he ran interference between the local households and our home office. He and his family have used countless prototypes, keeping exacting notes, recording flow rates, and monitoring quality. They liaised with neighbors, vendors and donors, and gave us an entry into the community that was priceless.

Website: https://somosola.org

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/olafilter/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabethclandos/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/olafilter

Image Credits
Christina Jen Photography