Water for Gambia
Water for Gambia
This project is given by the minor IPD from the university Fontys Venlo. The project is designed by Marcel Joosten and is a sequel of the project from the year before called Water For Gambia. The group contains out of 7 international students. From Dutch and Italian nationalities.
The assignment of this project was: Help in some way with the water problem in Gambia.
The boundaries of the project were free and the project group could decide its own expectations.
In the first phase, there was a research about the situation in Gambia and the work of last year project.
The following phase of the project the boundaries were made of the project.
The Assignment of this project is: Build with students from Gambia an easy buildable water pump with second hand materials.
The aim of the project is: Students from Gambia can build a water pump by their own so they can help their own people at the end of the project. While the boundaries of the project were made clear a plan of action is made.
After the plan of action phase, the design phase started. There was a lot of brainstorming and project trips to get more information about water pumps. The final decision was made to make a rope pump.
The benefits of the ropepump are:
• It is easy to build
• It can be made with the availably materials in Gambia
• It is cheap
The rope pump
The fundraising event
The phase after that was building a prototype and collect money for the project. The money of this project is used for the trip to Gambia. The way of getting the money was by organizing an event. With this event pizzas were sold and there was an auction. With this auction we sold gambian paintings and rare items from Gambian. With this event there were some presentations, the prototype was shown and there was a lesson dowsing. The event was a succes and we collected around €1400,-. The next phase was organizing the trip. The last contribution of the project was from Fontys by paying for all the flight tickets.
In a late phase of the project a new assignment was chosen to also make a borehole at the PIA school in Gambia where the water pump is going to be build. The hole was drilled until 10 meters deep. After that the drilling system was not good enough to finish the complete hole. 3 days were lost from the trip with trying to fix it. So this assignment is not finished yet. Still a plan was made and financed on the last day to finish the total process after the project group left. This work is still in progress.
The assignment and the aim of the Water For Gambia project was finished because in Gambia the water pump was built with the Gambian students. The water pump was tested and it worked. After finishing the water pump the manual of the water pump was donated to the school. In this way they can build the water pump without any instructions of the projectgroup.
video PIA School
The trip to Gambia
With the extra money that was left over for the Gambia project we decided to help someone in Gambia. Before the trip to Gambia Mr. Didar Houseini gave a generous amount of money with the question: Can the project group do something good with this money in Gambia?
The project group received a letter in Gambia from a man that was building his house and had some very sad setbacks. While he was building his house the rain destroyed a part of his house that he needed to rebuild. Doing this he had no money left for a roof above his head. This would mean if it starts raining again his house will be destroyed again. The money that was left over and the money from Mr. Didar Houseini was used for this man and his family. We gave a whole family a roof above their heads thanks to Mr. Didar Houseini.
