Between July and August of 2015, KuGlobalAid members conducted a social entrepreneurship project in Mumbai, India and introduced a newly designed water filter to residents of Dharavi Slum, which is the second largest slum in Asia with the population of more than 1 million, to promote safe water resources for the area. Students say that they had a once in a lifetime experience out of their comfort zones in Mumbai.

In the first week of the project, students had several field trips in Dharavi and tried to learn further about the problem laying based on the polluted water the residents use. They created and work on a project model by using design thinking methods. In the following weeks, also continuing to the field trips, they trained 7- and 8-year-old children about hygiene and sanitation at the Royal City School in Dharavi. Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Sundara and Reality Gives were the partners of their project. Students say that their story was a story of “contrast”: between white and dark, the humid and the arid, the rich and the poor. They experienced being a foreigner by their physical appearances, by the humid air that they/we inhaling to their lungs. They observed and truly faced with the caste system up to the end, had a chance to see the gap between the rich and the poor, and difference between lands such as Dharavi, Colaba, and Bandra. During the implementation of their projects one of the most significant experience, they say, was the interaction with children who were born into very harsh conditions in Mumbai but still have that spiritual energy and sincere smiles on their faces.