Demotech, design for self reliance


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Workshop Workforce on Water

The Student Workforce has organized a workshop directed at creating understanding for the aspect of 'making' and self-reliance in poor rural consitions. This series of picures will give an impression of how this workshop 'worked'.
First pictures are from a workshop on fetching water, the second is on making the rubber water fetching bags.

Fetching water from a well
You have to bend far over, the rope is thin and the weight of the water makes it cut in your skin. The layer of water in the well is only little and the bags fills up slowly and only partly.
Workforce students experienced these conditions in a test environment along the river Maast behind the building LBB,

Lifting the full water bag out of the water
In the workshop participants could experience the difference between hauling up the bag with a thin rope, a thick rope and an innovative method: a thin rope was used, being strong enough for the little weight of the water, but wooden buts were inserted in the rope at regular intervals.
Innovation can -without cost- solve a daily experienced problem caused by poverty: strain because of a too thin rope.
Carrying water on your head
D030_080911WaterBagWorkshop9_200.jpg
Fetching water with a thin rope

Innovation: thin rope but easy fetching thanks to wooden buts

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