PBS FRONTLINE World Video | Play Pump

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.
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.
www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/rou...

[@btryanski]

Lauchland, I couldn’t agree more. When I first posted this, we were using it as an example of innovative thinking. Today we show it along with the counterpoint video listed below as an example of how innovative ideas can go horribly wrong.

[@lauchlanmunro7075]

This video is so incomplete and misleading. In reality, PlayPumps was a toxic mix of poor technology, high costs, and white saviourism. The major funders mentioned in this video have all admitted it was a huge mistake and a waste of money and time. The technology is inefficient compared to the usual handpumps, children quickly tire of going round in circles, and advertisers rarely want to rent billboard in poor rural communities. I use PlayPumps in my project management class as a classic case of how NOT to do a development project. Those teaching social entrepreneurship would do well to do the same. Lauchlan Munro, University of Ottawa

[@AnythingZoe]

Amazing.

[@ilannavea7765]

Nice

[@lucyequine5175]

This is awesome

[@vladbcom]

good intentions ... but this is just stupid.

[@Nouman]

Why that ?