PlayPump has brought water and fun to more than 1200 communities

Access to clean drinking water is critical for human survival and is an essential ingredient for improving the lives of those living in poverty in developing countries. And yet:

• More than one billion people worldwide do not have access to clean water.
• Water-related diseases are the leading cause of death in the world, taking the lives of 6,000 people a day, and are responsible for 80 percent of all sickness in the world.
• 40 billion hours are lost annually to hauling water, a chore primarily undertaken by women and girls.

All this can change

A life-changing and life-saving invention – the PlayPump® water system — can provide easy access to clean drinking water, bring joy to children, and lead to improvements in health, education, gender equality, and economic development.

The PlayPump systems are innovative, sustainable, patented water pumps powered by children at play. Installed near schools, the PlayPump system doubles as a water pump and a merry-go-round for children.

The PlayPump system also provides one of the only ways to reach rural and peri-urban communities with potentially life saving public health messages.

How it works

While children have fun spinning on the PlayPump merry-go-round (1), clean water is pumped (2) from underground (3) into a 2,500-liter tank (4), standing seven meters above the ground.

A simple tap (5) makes it easy for adults and children to draw water. Excess water is diverted from the storage tank back down into the borehole (6).

The water storage tank (7) provides a rare opportunity to advertise in outlaying communities. All four sides of the tank are leased as billboards, with two sides for consumer advertising and the other two sides for health and educational messages. The revenue generated by this unique model pays for pump maintenance.

The design of the PlayPump water system makes it highly effective, easy to operate and very economical, keeping costs and maintenance to an absolute minimum.

Capable of producing up to 1,400 liters of water per hour at 16 rpm from a depth of 40 meters, it is effective up to a depth of 100 meters.

Learn more at http://playpump.org