If you go:
What: Seepex and Design Outreach informational event
When: 5:30 to 8 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 30.
Where: Seepex, 511 Speedway Drive, Enon
For more: Visit www.dooutreach.org or email staceys@dooutreach.org
Committed coverage
The Springfield News-Sun is committed to providing the best coverage of business in Clark and Champaign counties. For this story, the newspaper interviewed local business officials, as well as nonprofits and other sources to help explain how a local firm is helping provide clean drinking water for thousands of residents in impoverished countries.
An Enon manufacturing firm’s work is at the heart of an international project designed to provide accessible, clean water to thousands of people in some of Sub-Saharan Africa’s poorest regions.
Seepex Inc., which produces specialized pumps for a wide range of industries, is working closely with Design Outreach, a Columbus nonprofit. Together, they are developing a deep well water pump that can be installed in developing nations. The organizations are raising money and awareness for a pilot program that, if successful, could install 100 water pumps this year and provide clean water to as many as 50,000 people in some of the world’s poorest countries.
If the project is successful, the demand for the pumps could increase, meaning Seepex could hire more workers and buy more raw materials along with other services needed to produce the pumps. However, Seepex will manufacture and provide the pumps to the Columbus nonprofit at cost.
“Seepex is in it for humanitarian reasons,” said Kamran Mirza, director of business development for Seepex. “We don’t intend to make a profit off this.”
Ensuring access to clean water in Africa’s poorest countries has been a challenge for decades, said Greg Bixler, CEO of Design Outreach. The organization is a charity that tries to alleviate poverty by designing and delivering new technology in developing countries.
Over the past few decades, more than 345,000 water pumps have been installed throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. But more than 60 percent of those no longer function due to the need for deeper wells and the difficulty of replacing parts in pumps that eventually break down, according to information from the Rural Water Supply Network. Bixler estimated each pump provides water to between 300 and 500 people in a typical village.
While many in the U.S. take drinking water for granted, having easy access to a reliable well can significantly improve lives in remote villages in countries like Malawi and the Central African Republic, Bixler said.
“It’s kind of like giving someone in the U.S. a $10 million lottery ticket,” Bixler said. “That’s how important a water pump is in these villages.”
The new LIFEPUMP prototype, which Seepex helped design and manufacture, was built to be more efficient, use fewer parts, reach deeper wells and last longer than other pumps currently available. It was also built with a hand crank that can easily be used by children, who are often tasked with collecting water in the villages where it will be installed.
“There’s been a lot of effort that’s been put into this,” Mirza said of the pump. “We’ve engineered it with a lot of things that we thought were important.”
Many of the existing pumps that have been abandoned could easily be repaired with a part that may cost only a few dollars, Bixler said. While it may sound like an easy fix in the U.S., the region’s poor infrastructure can make delivering those parts an ordeal.
“The trouble is the supply chain,” Bixler said. “Getting those dollar parts out to areas where those villages are could cost several hundred dollars in fuel and truck costs. The village has no money to pay for that, and so a lot of times they just abandon the pump.”
Instead, women and children in the villages often walk a mile or more to draw water from shallow pools of water that are often contaminated. The long, repeated trips mean women have less time for other chores, and children often can’t attend school, said Doug Brennan, board president of Water For Good, a nonprofit organization has drilled hundreds of wells in the Central African Republic.
“They’re spending three hours a day fetching bad water,” Brennan said.
Once Seepex delivers the pumps, Design Outreach will work with World Vision International, which will donate additional resources to drill wells, as well as ship and help install the pumps. Initially, Bixler said the goal will be to install 100 pumps in up to 10 countries. Design Outreach is also seeking donations of cash and in-kind services from other local companies help contribute to the project as well.
“We want companies to get involved,” Bixler said. “We think that Ohio could become the producer of these life-saving hand pumps for Africa. I think that’s something companies can be very proud of.”
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