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Power to the People: Providing Solar-Powered Water Pumps to the People of Rural Haiti
In Zoranje, a remote mountain zone in south-eastern Haiti, children and youth join adults to carry water from springs for cooking, drinking and cleaning. For a distant spring, the round trip may take hours. Hauling water exacts a great expenditure of energy (calories) among this chronically malnourished population.
Substituting solar power for human labor is part of a solution. Our aim is to make water more easily accessible to this community. Solar-powered pumps and pipes will bring water up from the spring to a storage tank.
If Pigs Could Fly-Haiti, a nonprofit founded by Dr. Randy Mont-Reynaud, has been working with communities in Zoranje for the past 12 years to deter-mine needs and create sustainable solu-tions. Past projects include:
• Supporting small-scale peanut butter production with repurposed meat grind-ers - providing work for the production team and snacks to 170 school children.
• Installing a solar lamp post, in collabo-ration with a Haitian team of engineers.
• Purchasing and transporting sewing machines so skilled local residents can offer beginning sewing classes.
• Introducing the CEO of Digicel, the Carribean’s largest cellular provider, to the mountain zone. After meeting with Dr. Mont-Reynaud and residents, Digicel agreed to construct the first brick and mortar school in the region. This project is now nearing completion!
Dr. Eric Sabelman, mechanical engineer, designed a water pump “kit”: a solar panel and pump package that is easily transportable, quickly assembled, resis-tant to hurricanes, and most usefully, scalable for implementation in other communities facing similar water accessibility issues, in Haiti and throughout the world. The pump system can move up to 400 gallons per day, and excess water can be used for irrigation. The solar controller design also allows residents to charge their cell phones or other elec-tronic devices using any excess power generated by the solar panels.
How It Works
If Pigs Could Fly Haiti is a registered 501(C3) organization, all contributions are tax-deductible.
Please donate at www.causes.com/causes/529435-if-pigs-could-fly-haiti or send a check made out to ‘If Pigs Could Fly Haiti’ to:
If Pigs Could Fly - Haiti, 4250 El Camino Real, C126, Palo Alto CA 94306
The pump kit has already been shipped to Haiti, engineers have volunteered their time to
install the system, and a local resident has been selected to maintain and secure the pump.
To complete this project, we need only $3,000.
This will cover the cost of materials to be purchased in Haiti,
including:
PVC piping a water storage tank concrete and cement blocks for stabilizing the structure steel conduit for lightning rod and solar panel structures With your donations, this simple, sustainable solution will be
installed in August 2013, and 50 families in the Zoranje re-
gion will finally have easy access to clean water .
For more information:
www.ifpigscouldflyhaiti.org
www.haitinextdoor.org (blog)
Trudy Reagan
(650) 856-9593
Problem
and
Solution
Miniature model for teaching and learning.
If Pigs Could Fly Haiti is a registered 501(C3) organization, all contributions are tax-deductible.
Please donate at www.causes.com/causes/529435-if-pigs-could-fly-haiti or send a check made out to ‘If Pigs Could Fly Haiti’ to:
If Pigs Could Fly - Haiti, 4250 El Camino Real, C126, Palo Alto CA 94306
