CNN: An App to Clean the World's Water?
October 22, 2010
By CNN
Camden, Maine (CNN) -- Water pumps can save lives -- but only if they work.
That's the seemingly obvious idea behind a new smartphone app, called Flow, that lets people in the developing world snap pictures of water pumps that are broken.
When you look at the details, it's not a given that these pumps will function.
A substantial percentage -- perhaps 30 percent to 45 percent -- of water pumps installed by the United Nations, the U.S. Agency for International Development and various nonprofit development groups break within about a decade, according to Ned Breslin, CEO of the group Water for People, which launched the Android app in a presentation at the PopTech conference here in Maine.
Often, the groups that have installed these pumps don't know they're broken, Breslin said. Or they turn a blind eye to the issue in favor of telling positive stories about how many pumps they've installed and how many people have access to clean water because of them.
The consequences of this shortsightedness can be dire. Breslin told a story of a woman named Maria, a friend of his in Mozambique, whose 3-year-old son died after a water pump broke and he drank untreated water.
Breslin recalled driving the boy's mother back to her house immediately after she found him dead. They passed by the broken pump on the drive, and she stared at it as if it were the devil -- a murderer who killed her child, he said.
"We can no longer listen just to happy stories," he said.
What do you think?
