Have You Seen It?

I don't subscribe to cable or dish television. I have this memory from way back. I must have been around 4 or 5 because my family lived in Missouri. Sticking in the ground next to our house was the antennae pole. Everyone had one. I personally used it to shimmy up the side of the house, grabbing the pole and walking up the wall.

I bet other people my age have this memory. I bet no one even ten years younger can say the same. It's kind of a shame, in my personal opinion.

Anyway, I begin my post with that memory for a reason. I don't watch much television. Something I like to watch, whenever I can catch it, is Frontline. I have to be honest. The inspiring stories get me like hallmark commercials at Christmas.

Recently, they did a story I'd like to spread the word about. It was about a company who just might change the world.

The Play Pump is the brain child of an inventor and entrepreneur Trevor Field. For those of you who might not be able to view the video, this is a revolving pump that costs around $7000. It takes seven men just a day's work to put together. It is installed in playgrounds in South Africa, where children use them as merry-go-rounds. While the children are spinning on this brightly colored piece of "playground" equipment, they are doing something else. They are running a low tech system below the ground that pumps clean drinking water to the surface, filling a holding tank in the village at the rate of up to 400 gallons an hour.

Playgrounds are pretty rare in South Africa. The kids love it. Clean drinking water right in your own village can also be pretty rare, particularly in towns like Stinkwater, or in towns where the drinking water they've been using for years was contaminated.

Trevor sells ad space ON the water tanks, to pay for ongoing maintenance of the towers. One of the ad campaigns is about AIDS awareness.

"If we could put a thousand pumps in each country that's water stressed, we'd make a monster difference to rural water supplies," says Trevor Field.

So how about this? They got 16.4 million dollars from the U.S. government. And the backing of some influential rock stars. And now, they've got a new facility, employing people to make the equipment, employing people to install the pumps.

"Now we've got the facility to do it. We're going to change the world, I think."

Wow. If you get the chance to watch this, do it. This man made money in the advertising business, and at the age of 42, decided to change directions completely. And watch him when he speaks. It's the face of a man whose sitting on top of a very big, exciting secret, and he can barely contain his enthusiasm. Only it's not a secret anymore, and by sharing it, he and Play Pumps International now is on target to provide clean fresh drinking water for 10 million people by 2010. If you haven't noticed, that's next year.

Forget bottling the water from the play pump. Bottle that enthusiasm for helping others, moving beyond what you can do for yourself to what you can do for others, and I don't just think you'll improve the lives of 10 million people. I think you just might save yourself and the world.

Call me Pollyanna. It's okay.

-Laura