EMS RISE up and win Social Value Award for MANTIS

EMS are delighted to have won the Social Value award for our MANTIS project at this year’s RISE Awards. Hosted by Leeds Sustainability Institute at Leeds Beckett University, these awards highlight and reward pioneering initiatives in Research, Innovation, Sustainability and Enterprise (RISE.) The Social Value Award is presented to the organisation which is deemed to best demonstrate an ability to bring together value and benefit to society.

EMS was shortlisted for this award for our partnership with Leeds Beckett University on the MANTIS (Monitoring and ANalytics To Improve Service) project. The aim of this project is to develop low-cost pump monitoring technology for use in the developing world, helping to tackle the challenge of broken hand-operated water pumps going unnoticed in rural communities. The MANTIS project has been in development with Leeds Becket University and Visual Wind Ltd, another UK SME, since 2014.

The RISE Award judges commented on MANTIS, “Worldwide 780 million people live without basic and reliable water supplies, many rely on hand pumps but at any one time a third of pumps are not working. Mantis are awarded the winner with their work in creating a monitoring and analytical tool for hand pumps to improve local water supplies”.

Our heartfelt thanks go to Jackie Church and the GLoVE Project for their invaluable help with setting up a demonstration project in the Gambia and introducing us to the Ministry of Fisheries and Water Resources; also to Mr Jabbi, Head of Rural Water Supplies for the Ministry for his great knowledge and enthusiasm. The GLoVE project (Gambian Longevity through Village Enterprise) is a small charity, working in partnership with rural village Communities in The Gambia, West Africa to reduce poverty, establish sustainable enterprises, promote education and improve health.

We would like to thank Joseph Kobba. Without his help battling the rainy season to locate field sites all over the Bumpe Ngao Chiefdom in Sierra Leone, our first MANTIS trial could not have gone ahead.

This is a new and exciting area of work for EMS and therefore we would like to say a special thank you to Professor Chris Gorse, Dr Andy Swan, Janet Mulcrone and the Leeds Sustainability Institute, for giving us great insight into how SMEs are able to use innovative technology to help solve problems in the developing world.