April 2nd through the 13th, I had an opportunity to travel to Malawi Africa with my family and Design Outreach (DO) team members to help bring clean water, sanitation, and medical support to rural villages.
DO is a Christian nonprofit comprised of a global team of problem solvers dedicated to creating solutions to the biggest problems facing people in low-income countries.
DO's goal is to develop and scale the use of reliable solutions to alleviate the suffering of hundreds of millions of people living in extreme poverty. While most of the world’s research and development focus and money is spent on complex digital technology to support high-budget consumers and business, DO focuses on supporting those who’s basic life needs are not being met.
Municipal water is only available in a few large cities in Malawi. The remainder of the population relies on hand pumped wells. Until recently, the only government-allowed hand pump was an Afridev. There are an estimated 50,000 Afridev pumps across Malawi. Unfortunately, these often fail, sometimes within 6 months, due to overuse, bad parts/design, and using them in deep applications. DO designed a progressive cavity pump, called the Life Pump, that uses PVC and stainless hardware, creating a long lasting, low maintenance pump capable of much deeper applications. Our team installed two Life Pumps on the trip for villages that hadn’t had access to clean water in over two years.
We also visited several other villages where DO is testing other new technologies. These included the Life Link, a sensor and telemetry unit to monitor and track Afridev pump usage to signal failures without community input; the Life Tap, a water valve for pressurized systems to reduce water waste; the Life Latrine, a low-cost, low-odor, easy to clean, and safe pit latrine; and the NPWT, a non-electrical negative pressure wound therapy machine to assist doctors in areas without reliable power sources.
At Wessler, our tag line is “More Than a Project”. DO truly embodies this same approach through all of their technologies. Our trip was more about the people, the communities, their needs, and spreading our Christian faith than it was about the technologies.
I have been involved with DO since 2018, including (along with Jody Williams) being a member of a volunteer engineering team working on Life Pump improvements. DO has grown a lot over the last several years and now has a full-time engineering and 
design team. They no longer have separate volunteer positions. However, after my recent trip there are some needs associated with updates to the Life Latrine and I would be happy to coordinate with anyone looking to be involved.
For more information on DO, click the image or link below or you can reach me directly at aaronh@wesslerengineering.com.
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