Of Clean Drinking Water and AIDS.

[hippywife]

Working to solve both issues is an incredible project that was aired last night on PBS Frontline. This was the most inspiring thing I have seen in a long time both in its ingenuity and simplicity! You just have to see this! It's called the "Play Pump."

Here is the link and a short excerpt. There is also a short video (6:48 min.)

http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/rough/2005/10/south_africa_th.html

Trevor Field, a retired advertising executive, had done well in life and wanted to give back to his community. He noticed that in many rural villages around the eastern Cape, the burden of collecting water fell mainly to the women and girls of the household. Each morning, he'd see them set off to the nearest borehole to collect water. They used leaky and often contaminated hand-pumps to collect the water, then they carried it back through the bush in buckets weighing 40 pounds. It was exhausting and time-consuming work.

"The amount of time these women are burning up collecting water, they could be at home looking after their kids, teaching their kids, being loving mothers," Field tells Costello. He knew there had to be a better solution.

Field then teamed up with an inventor and came up with the "play pump" -- a children's merry-go-round that pumps clean, safe drinking water from a deep borehole every time the children start to spin. Soup to nuts, the whole operation takes a few hours to install and costs around $7,000. Field's idea proved so inventive, so cost-efficient and so much fun for the kids that World Bank recognized it as one of the best new grassroots ideas.

In true ad-man style, Field's next idea was to use the play pump's water towers as makeshift billboards, selling ad space to help pay for the upkeep. He reserves a spot for the national loveLife campaign, which helps educate children about HIV and AIDS. "We've got to get the message through to them before they become sexually active," he says. "It seems to be working."

I believe it's these kinds of things that help insure the basic needs of people around the world that will lead to sustainability for poor communities where drinking water is scarce. I don't have much myself but I was so thrilled and inspired by what I saw, I plan on sending a little to assist this project.

I truly believe that if all people can have their basic needs met, a lasting peace in the world is possible!

[5X]

1. K & R. n/t

[sweetheart]

2. brilliant

what a brilliant idea, that.

k&r

That you believe this, is more beautiful than the belief

"I truly believe that if all people can have their basic needs met, a lasting peace in the world is possible!"

It shows a trust, a hope and a goodwill,
whether or not it is even true.

[hippywife]

3. To me it makes sense.

If everyone in the world has enough to eat, clean drinking water, shelter and access to medical care I truly believe that the smaller conflicts taking many lives around the world would cease to have reasons to continue.

If all have what they need to sustain life, it also becomes apparent that anyone who advocates war is doing it strictly out of greed and malice. Even tho those are already the real reasons for war, they would never again be able to hide it behind supposed humanitarian reasons.

It takes small steps that make big differences in the lives of the people most in need. This is such a small step on the surface of things but is such a life giving and sustaining gift that many of us take for granted...clean drinking water! Amazing!

I'm off to work this morning with no access to DU all day. I hope folks will keep this kicked!

[sweetheart]

4. It is very well meaning

I don't find that the persons starting wars are doing so out
of lack of water, shelter or access to medicine. Rather for
freedom, to become enlightened, and to live in an enlightened
society, to have your society reflect the enlightenment,
however little, or much.

That classically be "liberty", the right to be enganged in
your government, to be enfranchised. So i find the idea to
be very physical, that, and without liberty, those things
are of little value.

Here in scotland, the very things you mention are true. By and
large, all poor are given housing, enough to eat, clean water
and medical care. Yet people drink and do drugs at rates like
in america, violent crime as well, and i see this as a reflection
of liberty's absence, in a society that does not hold truth as
its standards for journalism, but the aristocratic fetish of the day.

I would add to your comment, the Uniersal Declaration of Human rights,
to fill out the missing bits unenumerated.

[MsTryska]

5. Now how come my Frontline was "Country Boys"? nt

nt