March 2008
The March Regional Meeting was held on Saturday 1st March 2008 and hosted by SI Newcastle.
The theme of the day was water. Attendees were given some very interesting facts, figures and thoughts about water.
This was followed by a presentation by our guest speaker Karen Mercer from Pump Aid. Karen began by saying that 1 person dies every 15 seconds from drinking contaminated water.
Pump Aid came about as a result of a student who went to Zimbabwe. He was so appalled by the conditions he saw there, especially in relation to the provision of water that he felt he had to do something. He came up and designed an ‘elephant pump’.
Local people can build a pump in 4 hours and only locally sourced materials are used. It is easy to maintain and provides a village with clean drinking water and irrigation. There are now over 4 thousand pumps installed in Zimbabwe and also in Malawi and Mozambique all providing villages with safe, clean water for drinking and irrigation.
If you would like to know more about the work of Pump Aid then please use the link below.