A broken pump bursts back into life.
Over the years that we’ve been installing water projects, we’ve also become aware of the large number of failed hand pumps. Many of these were installed in the 1970s and have fallen into disrepair and denied the communities access to a clean water source as they had neither the tools nor the training to repair them.[full_page]
Local team repairs hand pump
Last year, in partnership with World Duty Free and the Co-Operative Group we started a pilot programme to map out two districts in Malawi and found 40% of the hand pumps didn’t work. Crazy. The One Foundation has since launched a Water Pump Repair Programme with the aim of ‘empowering communities and restoring water’ by fixing over 150 non-functional pumps.
The programme sets out to:
- restore the supply of water through teams on the ground repairing hand pumps
- educate communities on how to carry out repairs
- set up committees responsible for on-going maintenance
A simple toolkit is usually all that’s required
We’re now in the process of building a training school to help scale up the programme. If you would like to contribute to that, please visit our JustGiving or Virgin Money Giving. We can repair a pump for as little as £12 so it’s a great programme to support.[/full_page]