Impact/Purpose:

The village of Sissene, Burkina Faso, is located in one of the least densely populated regions in Western Africa. It is greatly affected by lack of access to water, which is key to economic, physical and social growth. Lack of water is related to poverty, hunger, high rates of child and maternal mortality, gender inequality, and the spread of infectious diseases (Deen 2007). In the rural village of Sissene, rain only falls from June to August and since there is currently no way to collect and store water on a large scale, when residents run out of water they often migrate to neighboring towns in search of jobs, water and food. Our P3 team has developed a solution to this problem by designing a low-tech, low-cost system that improves upon a standard reservoir design to filter and purify stored rainfall year round.

Description:

The primary goal of our Phase 1 funding was to complete a scaled version of our P3 design. The great thing about our project is that it would help almost 4,000 residents and give hope to several adjacent villages that clean water was not a privilege, it is a right. Due to the location of the site, we relied upon secondary data and personal accounts to guide our planning and prototype design, which resulted in conflicting information creating quite a precarious situation. Ultimately, we successfully developed a sound design, we decided to develop a model demonstrating the functionality of the system and instead of testing size, we used the model to test our design capabilities and establish baseline measurements.

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Project Information:

An American nonprofit developer will begin construction on a standard deep open pool reservoir in Sissene in February 2008. Our design is intended to be a major improvement to this project, eliminating most evaporation, installing a system to filter rain and collected water, and distributing water for irrigation and household uses. Our design relies solely on solar energy, gravity, and basic principles of sustainability. This design will provide quantitative and qualitative improvements. The system will hold up to 7,920m3 (2,092,242 gallons), which should satisfy the needs of residents year round.

An American nonprofit developer will begin construction on a standard deep open pool reservoir in Sissene in February 2008. Our design is intended to be a major improvement to this project, eliminating most evaporation, installing a system to filter rain and collected water, and distributing water for irrigation and household uses. Our design relies solely on solar energy, gravity, and basic principles of sustainability. This design will provide quantitative and qualitative improvements. The system will hold up to 7,920m3 (2,092,242 gallons), which should satisfy the needs of residents year round.

An American nonprofit developer will begin construction on a standard deep open pool reservoir in Sissene in February 2008. Our design is intended to be a major improvement to this project, eliminating most evaporation, installing a system to filter rain and collected water, and distributing water for irrigation and household uses. Our design relies solely on solar energy, gravity, and basic principles of sustainability. This design will provide quantitative and qualitative improvements. The system will hold up to 7,920m3 (2,092,242 gallons), which should satisfy the needs of residents year round.

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