Challenges

Challenges: In developing countries, villagers often must spend hours each day walking to and from the nearest water source. In areas where drought and flood cycle back and forth, new means of collecting and keeping water safe are needed. In many places, the problem is a single, shared source of water used for bathing, boats, urinating, laundry and cooking.

Solutions: Sometimes it's traditional low-tech: drilling a well, supplying cisterns. Sometimes it's new technology: wind-powered pumps, gathering condensation from fog. The successful projects are not where outsiders simply supply funding and equipment, but where receiving communities literally buy into the process from concept through maintenance.