Posts Tagged ‘water’

Last night, by chance, I caught the end of a PBS show entitled “The New Heroes” which chronicles the stories of a number of social entrepreneurs around the world who, “against all odds, are successfully alleviating poverty and illness, combating unemployment and violence, and bringing education, light, opportunity and freedom to poor and marginalized people around the world.” The two stories I saw were about a Kenyan company providing cheap tools to enhance profits and a Brazilian who has brought affordable electricity to millions.

ApproTEC is a non-profit which is now known as KickStart. They sell low-cost technological tools to Kenyan farmers. Their pump allows farmers to spend far less time watering fields. By raising efficiency (farmers previously used a simple bucket to water fields), the average customer sees profits rise 10 fold. They have sold 32,000 pumps but have reach troubles because the cost of selling them is prohibitively high. Because a simple capitalist approach would not allow them to do this important work, 70% of the operation is subsidized. At the end of the piece of ApproTEC, it mentioned that they were seeking $20 million to expand and replicate the model throughout sub-Saharan Africa where most people are farmers in similar situations and may benefit from the low-cost tools. Much of this would be spent on marketing. I wonder, though, if there are ways to market the pumps without spending so much money. How can the world’s poor be enabled to spread information in a peer-to-peer model? Western marketers have, for years, tried to reap the benefits of word of mouth; can KickStart do the same?

The next story was of Fabio Rosa, a Brazilian “electrical Guacho.” Fabio was disturbed by the mass migration to cities and the resultant cost to culture and society in the rural areas of Brazil. His solution was to bring electricity to the unwired rural areas of Brazil. “Electricity represents hope and the future” by allowing irrigation and profitable rice cultivation. Further, the modernity that younger generations seek in cities can be brought to their traditional lands. Fabio relied on “single-wire” electricity and rented solar power to electrify the farmlands. More than 1 million people use his methods and his company, The Sun Shines for All, is a large part of the revitalization of guacho culture as people return to the fields where they can profitably farm.

Both KickStart and Fabio Rosa recognize that people, even the poorest, are assets, not liabilities. They embrace the “hacker ethic” that idealistically seeks to change rotten status quo through experimentation and revolutionary thinking.

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1.1 billion people do not have access to clean water supplies and recent disasters in China and Burma highlight the fleeting stability that even luckier people have. Drinking clean water is a multifacted challenge which requires access to water, transportation and purification. A recent post on Global Voices highlights a number of innovative solutions to this dire problem.

Often, the transportation of water can be a full day’s work involving a many-mile trek with heavy loads of water. The Q-Drum is a simple container which can alleviate this burden.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8sMAolVUEw]

Once water is available for consumption, purity remains a major concern. More than 6,000 people die daily from drinking unsafe water. The LifeStraw is a purification tool which lasts for many uses and cleanses water of all major troubles.

If, however, a water source is available near the homes in the developing world, a clever system call PlayPumps provide a way to tap wells, store water and purify it using children who get to play on it’s rotating wheel.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMs_Z80JYls&eurl]

But, far and away, the most elegant solution highlighted was the Aquaduct. A mobile filtration vehicle, the Aquaduct is a tricycle which both stores and purifies water acquired at a distant source. It’s brilliantly simple and I’d love to hear more about it or other ways to utilize the excess energy created by bicycles which represent an environmentally sound way to travel.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U-mvfjyiao]

What are other daily activities which have externalities waiting to be harnessed for good?