What are Smart Handpumps?
Many rural communities across the developing world rely on hand pumps for their daily water needs, but at any one time, one in four pumps is broken. Smart Handpumps have a transmitter that alert mechanics if they are broken. In the research trial area in Eastern Kenya, 98% of repairs are now completed within three days, rather than weeks or months. We now need to raise £50,000 to develop this technology to allow Smart Handpumps to be deployed in other parts of Kenya, and beyond, so that more people can benefit from sustainable water supplies.
Why should you be interested?
Are you passionate about ensuring access to reliable water? About ensuring women and girls can spend more time learning, caring, working rather than walking to fetch water? Do you love technology solutions - or prefer developing good social models, with real policy impact?
OxReach is a collaboration between the University of Oxford Development Office and Oxford University Innovation, which seeks external mass funding for research projects with real social impact. Smart Handpumps is the outcome of a multi-disciplinary research project involving academics within the Oxford Water Network, including SoGE, Engineering and the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment.
How can you help?
- Sign up as a ‘Supporter’ on the OxReach site, to get your own URL and see how good your influencer skills are! Please do spread the word as widely as possible: https://oxreach.hubbub.net/p/Smartpumps/supporters/
- Write a LinkedIn Post, from your personal profile or on your department’s page.
- Add a news item or banner to your website, as per the suggested ‘Key Messages’ document in the Dropbox, and attached with the Press Release for simplicity.
- Follow, re-post or comment on updates from our accounts:
- @OxReach: the crowdfunding platform run by UODO (the university Development Office) and OUI (Oxford University Innovation)
- @SmartHandpumps: the project account, run by Patrick Thomson (Engineering, Worcester 1997), a researcher in the School of Geography and the Environment
- @OxfordGiving: The Development Office channel (www.facebook.com/OxfordGiving/)
Feel free to re-use the messages in the Dropbox folder, or create your own with the assets available:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/65q5d544xipq82m/AAB8pRG9l2pgdGu-BJF_QqEwa?dl=0
If you have any questions or feedback, please contact Claire Grainger on marketing@devoff.ox.ac.uk
And of course, if you feel this cause is worthwhile, please do donate – every drop counts, and for this appeal, every £1 donated will be matched by the Global Challenges Research Fund
