EKOCENTER is a modularly designed kiosk with Slingshot at its core, transformed from a 20-foot shipping container into a hub of community activity, offering clean, safe drinking water, alongside other services, such as access to wireless communication, electricity, vaccination storage, and more tailored to address community needs. Slingshot is a water purification system.
A consortium of donors, including the Coca Cola Company has committed itself to place between 1,500 and 2,000 units in the form of EKOCENTERs, “downtowns in a box,” or Slingshot water purification systems to deliver further services beyond clean water, in Africa, Asia, Latin America and North America. Through this commitment, we aim to deliver 500 million liters of safe drinking water, while promoting greater local development in communities that need it most.
The slingshot described in the video was designed to produce 1000 liters of water a day, or to serve a village of 1000 people with an average of 10 liters of potable water per person per day.
So 2000 of these units would serve 200,000 people. This will not transform the world, but it might transform the world for those people in those villages!
Of course, the question is whether the villages will be able to maintain the centers and water purifiers. Villages that don't have potable water don't tend to have a lot of technological capacity. The donors may find a networking solution to provide the needed maintenance, others have found ways to finance and maintain village communication centers. If so, and if the people will understand and accept distilled water for drinking, then this is a nice project. If not, then we will see more white elephants placed in the middle of more poor villages.
1 comment:
John -- I think that the model implies that maintenance will be taken care of by the kiosk operator and/or CC, which has an interest in keeping the unit running -- and its positive name recognition...
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