Is something better than nothing? | Greg Bixler | TEDxOhioStateUniversity

Dr. Greg Bixler explores the question "Is Something Better than Nothing?" through the creation of the LifePump to combat the water crisis in Africa. Often a solution is only a temporary fix for a problem. Dr. Bixler calls upon us to make it our duty to find solutions that last and create real, global impact.

Dr. Bixler serves as a senior lecturer in the Department of Engineering Education at The Ohio State University and has 15 years of engineering experience. He has developed curriculum and enjoys teaching first year through graduate students on topics ranging from the fundamentals of engineering to appropriate technology development. Integrated in his courses are personal experiences as a global entrepreneur and innovator developed while working at Battelle Memorial Institute and Design Outreach (DO). At Battelle, he managed interdisciplinary teams of engineers working on a variety of Research and Development programs. Inspired by the Battelle model, Dr. Bixler co-founded DO in 2007, which is a Christian humanitarian engineering nonprofit comprised of 5 staff, 75 volunteers, and 12 partner organizations creating sustainable solutions to problems that people in developing countries are facing. His endeavors have lead him to 18 countries around the world while serving as CEO of DO.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

How is it in our world today,

of iPhones, internet
and international space stations,

that 663 million people
don't have safe water?

This is a huge number, and it's very hard
to wrap our minds around big numbers.

2,300.

This represents the number
of people that die every day

due to waterborne disease.

Still a big number,

still hard to wrap our minds
around that concept.

16.

This represents the number of people

that are going to die
by the end of my talk.

This is astounding.
This is terrible.

And so I was motivated by my faith

to help to alleviate
this terrible suffering

that's occurring around the world today.

And one of the most common ways
of solving this problem

is through putting in hand pumps.

So in developing countries,

there's lots of hand pumps
getting the water out of the ground.

So you see these pictures

with people and kids smiling, happy,

getting water for the first time.

But I ask myself,
If this is really working,

why are there still 663 million people
without safe water?

Furthermore, this looks a lot different
than the way I get water.

I go to a spigot,
and I turn on the faucet,

and I get clean water as much as I want.

Is this working?

This really led me down
this journey of discovery

to try to understand better
the problems with water.

I quickly teamed up with some
volunteers who were like-minded,

who wanted to do so

and looking at the research
and talking to missionaries

and interviewing NGOs
about what they were doing.

Then I had the chance
to go to Africa myself

and see the problems firsthand.

Here we are in northern Malawi,

and we're talking to village leaders,

and we're talking
to World Vision officials,

learning about all the complexities
of the water crisis.

One of the big issues

is there's just not
a lot of water out there,

at least on the surface.

So boiling and filtering
and chlorinating water doesn't work

if you don't have enough to work with.

So we went to a village to see this.

We asked them to take us back
to where they were getting water.

So we walked down this long,
narrow path, this dirt path,

and we get to this place right here.

This big hole on the ground.

And in the bottom is a natural spring;

it's only about a three feet in diameter,
maybe six inches deep.

And this is where a village
of 300 people were getting water.

This is barely enough water to drink,
let alone to wash or to water a garden.

So this is a big problem.

And then there is the contamination issue.

We met this girl in northern Ethiopia.

We gave her a clear cup, and we asked,

Will you hold this up and show us
the water that you're using?

And this is a community
where there's lots of water;

there's actually a river,
and there's a dam and a pond.

But you can see how dirty that water is.

Because there's cattle
walking through the water,

doing what cows do the best.

And this is what they're using.

And to make matters worse,

it's the time and energy taken
to get that bad water.

This little girl we met in Malawi.

She's wearing her school uniform,

but instead of learning
reading, writing and arithmetic,

she is learning how to carry water

because that's what she's going to do
for most of her life.

In her community we're told

that the ladies, who are always
responsible for getting water,

are spending 12 hours a day getting water;

and they're getting this bad water.

That's no hope and no future.

And then there's the pump issue.

As a mechanical engineer,

I wanted to research
the technology, the hardware,

and see what could be done with that.

And as we're driving through,

you see lots of broken pumps
all over the place.

And we learned
that just in Sub-Saharan Africa,

there's about 345,000
hand pumps installed,

but about a third of those
are no longer functioning.

And we asked, Why? Why is that?

And one of the primary reasons is

these pumps were not designed
to be very long lasting or durable,

they are made to be inexpensive.

So what happens is these pumps
last on average maybe six months -

in some places only a few a weeks.

When they break, it takes an average
of 30 days to get them fixed -

if they ever get fixed.

What would you do for a day without water?

You go back to the same place
you got water before,

getting re-infected;

your garden, your plants die.

These pumps are based
on a piston-style technology.

They are dependent on o-rings and valves,
that are fairly inexpensive themselves,

but because there is not a supply chain
in most of the developing world,

these are very expensive to get.

So it costs hundreds of dollars
to get these pumps repaired every time.

Something that surprised us a little bit
was the drilling and the depth issues.

There's a lot of communities
that are told over time,

"Sorry, there's no water here."

The reason is because
the standard hand pumps,

the India Mark II and Afridev
around the world,

they only go down to about 45 or 50 meters

and just physically quit working.

To make matters worse,

when they are installed that deep,
they even break down quicker.

We learned that in many places,

if they just drilled a little bit deeper,
maybe 60 or 70 meters,

they actually would get into good water.

But because they don't have
the technology to get that water out,

they're told, "Sorry, we can't help you."

And that community
is tremendously disappointed.

To make matters even worse,

that drilling operation
costs thousands of dollars.

This happens a lot.

So it really begs the question,

Is something better than nothing?

Is this the best we can do?

Are we doing the best we can?

Our team of engineering volunteers,
we said, "No, we can do better.

We can create a much better option."

So we decided to build
a better hand pump,

a pump that would last years
instead of months,

and a pump that would go
much deeper into the ground,

going down to 100 meters.

This is based on a progressive
cavity-pumping technology,

which means you don't have
these o-rings and valves that can break.

And it's a very durable pump type.

So we took our first prototype here

to the Central African Republic in 2011.

This was a great learning experience,

which in engineering is code for ...

"It didn't work."

(Laughter)

We learned from our mistakes.

What happened was the pipes
we assumed they were using

were a different type of thread

than what we used in
the United States when we tested,

and in Africa we discover this.

But we're determined more than ever
to fix the problem.

So we re-tooled, created a new solution,

and we called it the LifePump.

In 2013,

we installed our first permanent
installations in Malawi with World Vision.

These were in communities
that the drill trucks went out,

the water was deeper
than 45 or 50 meters, and they said,

"We have a couple LifePumps,
they go 100 meters. Let's try them."

They'd put them in, they got water,

the community was ecstatic.

We were invited to a large scale pilot

to test this in different geographies,

different geologies, different cultures
and government systems.

We called this the 100 Pump Project

and quickly formed the organization,
the non-profit Design Outreach,

to support this, to scale this.

We started in Malawi,

and then we went to Zambia
and Kenya and Ethiopia,

and then last in Mali.

It's been a huge success.

Many lives permanently affected now.

We've reported on this,

we had an independent
evaluation done on this pilot,

and it's gotten a lot of good attention.

But some of the coolest stories
are people like Vickness.

Vickness is an amazing woman.
She is a grandmother.

She lives in one of the first communities
that got a pump in Malawi

in the village of Zolomondo.

And Vickness was on the water committee,

and when we had our pump installation
training team go to Zolomondo in 2013,

they met her.

And she had amazing aspirations.

She said, "I want to build a house,

I want to start a garden,
I want to build a school."

All these wonderful things,
and the team was like, "This is awesome."

So about six months later,

I got to go back to her village,

and I knew what she looked like;

she had no idea who I was.

And I ran up to her and said,
"Hi, Vickness, I'm Greg!"

And she looks at me like huh?

"I heard about you,
all the things you are going to do."

She is said, "Yeah yeah."

And I said, "Can you show me
the house and all these things?"

I was so excited to see
this development happen.

And so we walk through this village,

and there's these brick homes
all over the place.

What I didn't realize at the time
was those homes were new.

We got back to this house
she's leaning against; it's her home.

It's a four-room house
that she built with her own two hands.

Before that she was living
in a single-room shack.

And the reason she could do this

is because she had water in the village
to make these homemade bricks.

Extremely hard worker.

On top of that she had
twelve hours a day now to do that.

Before she was literally
spending twelve hours a day

going back and forth to get water.

This amazing development
didn't stop there.

I went back six months after that;

she had started this beautiful
garden of vegetables.

We went back after that;

she'd started building a second home,

and she'd rented
the first home to her sister.

And there were other
brick-building businesses popping up

and other gardens in the community.

This development is just amazing to see.

Then there's Kafwikamo Community School

in Zambia.

This is an example of where we
got to replace a pump

that kept breaking down very frequently.

Every few months, at this school,
this pump would break down.

We learned about this and said,

"This would be a great spot
for a durable pump."

A pump that lasts for five years,
between maintenance.

A pump that goes to a 100 meters.

I was talking to the headmaster here,

and he said, "I am so thankful
to have this pump."

I said, "Tell me more."

He's said, "Before this pump,

it was costing us so much money
fixing the old standard pump we had

that it was cutting
into my school budget."

This is a very, very poor school
in a very poor area.

He told us that the reason
why most kids come to this school

is because their parents know
they'll get at least one meal that day.

He said because I keep fixing the pump,

because the pump keeps breaking down,

he had to cut back
the amount of food they could buy.

Some of the kids quit
coming to school because of that.

He said, "Because of the LifePump here,

I can rely on this thing,
I know it's going to work and function;

it's not going to cost me all this money."

It's saving him literally hundreds
of dollars a year now

that goes to very necessary things
like food and school supplies.

And behind the building
was one of the coolest things.

Because of the LifePump,

he put in this huge garden.

This school is now having all these
nutritious vegetables coming to them.

The reason they
wouldn't plant a garden before

is because with the previous pump,
when it'd break down,

it would be catastrophic and sudden.

Remember, it takes 30 days
to get a pump fixed, on average,

and all their plants would die.

So they don't even invest
in the seeds to build the garden

because they are afraid
their plants will die.

The celebrations of communities
getting water the first time

are some of the best moments in my life.

Getting married, having kids,
graduating from college

and seeing a village
get water for the first time.

The celebrations
are just out of this world,

they are so genuine,

knowing that this community
is getting real hope

and a real future.

Today we have these pumps in 6 countries,

in Africa and Haiti.

We are affecting 24,000 lives now
because of this.

We have a goal of reaching
2.5 million people by 2030.

So this really begs the question,
Is something better than nothing?

I look at pictures like this,
the before and after,

and I ask myself,
If these were my kids,

which glass of water
would I want them to drink?

And I ask you the same question:
If these were your kids,

which glass of water
would you want them to drink?

I think the answer is obvious.

So is something better than nothing?

Well, it depends.

Is that something creating a real impact?

Is it creating a permanent solution?

Or is it a band-aid?
Is it a temporary fix?

And if it is, I encourage,
I urge us to never stop working

until we solve the problems
once and for all.

Thank you very much.

(Applause)