Children have fun, and pump fresh, clean, drinking water at the same time.

(1) Department of Water Affairs and Forestry.
(2) The World Bank Washington DC USA
(3) TVE ´ Hands on ´ productions
(4) Kaiser Family Foundation Washington D C
(5) Mission Life

This project provides a childrens "merry-go-round" or "roundabout" which, when bolted on top of an existing borehole, pumps fresh clean drinking water whilst the children play. These installations are targeting rural communities and primarily schools in Southern Africa. The water is stored in overhead tanks which are screened with advertising billboards that display HIV/AIDS Awareness messages to the children and community.

(1) 50% of the advertising space is sold commercialy which generates a regular flow of income thus guaranteeing maintenance and making the system sustainable indefinitely

(2) The system is enviromentally friendly because at night the borehole has at least 8 hours to recover naturally, consequently our system cannot be left accidentally SWITCHED ON to run dry, and pump the borehole dry or burn the motor out as with conventional systems

(3) Women and young girls are traditionally sent to collect water and with this system they do not have to affect any physical effort to pump the water out of the ground as the children have already done this for them. Similarly rural women and young girls run the highest risk of HIV/AIDS infection in any society due to an abundance of reasons such as abuse, rape, ignorance iliteracy, peer pressure ect ect, and therefore our HIV/AIDS Awareness messages target precisely the most vulnerable members of our society.

To date we have installed some 160+ roundabout playpumps in South Africa, each pump services a community of over 2 500 people. We have several success stories especialy regarding the production of fresh vegetables but the main measurable advantage is the reduction in illness in the population as a result of clean drinking water being available in particular regarding cholera.

The system is based on standard windmill equipment, that is to say everything below ground is standard 40mm galvanised windmill positive displacement pumping equipment. Above ground equipment ie. tank and galvanised sheet advertising boards are available at any farmers supply / co-op worldwide.

We think the system is self explanatory from an innovation point of view, but gives inspiration to all sorts of ideas such as the generation of electricity, the creation of brick making yards due to availablity of water, the possiblity of the tower being used for local communication etc.

The partnership between the Departmant of Water Affairs and Forestry (DWAF) and Roundabout Outdoor is solid, and works particularly well because DWAF supply all technical infomation relevant to ground water and the Minister himself encourages local and international donor organisations to put their weight behind this innovative water provision system.

The Kaiser Family Foundation use the donated advertisment space (50%) for HIV/AIDS awareness messages to our rural communities. This is effective as this medium focuses on deep rural peoples who do not have the luxuary of conventional first world media such as newspaper, magazines television and the internet etc.