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I found the message below in the Idealist group called "Global Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation" posted by John Oldfield. Take a look at http://www.idealist.org/if/en/forum/view/14133-132.

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Help! Microfinance and water
Date: September 5, 3:56pm
I need the Idealist community's help on something that's bugging me:

What would it take to get Muhammad Yunus and other microfinance institutions interested in reapplying everything we have learned about microfinance / microcredit to what I'll selfishly call socially beneficial businesses.

More specifically, what would it take to make small loans available to entrepreneurs throughout the developing world who want to launch socially beneficial businesses in the water and sanitation sector? Who can show me examples of where this is underway, and how it is working from the standpoints of financial, technical and sociocultural sustainability?

A couple of examples:

$20 puts a woman in the handmade soap-making business. Wrap the bars of soap in hygiene promotion messages, and you've got a job with enormous social benefits. Throw in am entertaining local language cartoon like Bazooka Joe and you'll have kids begging to wash their hands.

$100 would allow a villager to buy a few bags of cement, a shovel, and a mold for a cement pit latrine slab. Add a few donor dollars as a social marketing grant to kickstart the latrine business (these things rarely sell themselves), and you have a job with enormous social benefits. When the villager can no longer keep up with growing demand in his village - inshallah - he franchises the model, expands the business, and expands its social benefits.

$3,000 - $10,000+ provides an entrepreneur the opportunity to launch a water pumping business or water purification business. Depending on local externalities, this could involve a borehole and an electric pump. This could involve arsenic removal technology, UV water purification, protecting a spring, rainwater catchment and myriad other options.

Regardless of how sexy it is to start a revolution, we do not need a revolution here. We didn't need a revolution to kill smallpox. We won't need a revolution to kill polio, Guinea worm or even malaria. What we need is a little creativity. We need to take what we already know how to do with microfinance for betel nut juice sellers, bricklayers, bicycle repairmen and so on and reapply and customize those skills and financial models to the water sector.

Please post any examples/ideas you have. Thank you so much.