RP project bags 2nd prize in British environmental tilt

By Alex Villafania INQUIRER.net A FILIPINO project called the Alternative Indigenous Development Foundation, Inc (AIDFI) won second prize in the 2007 Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy, an international contest instituted in the United Kingdom that identifies projects related to efficient energy management at small community levels. AIDFI’s innovative "ram pump" technology won it the Ashden Awards second prize worth 10,000 British pounds (P928,000) for the Education and Welfare category. Ram pumps are devices that draw ground water up to certain heights without the need for external power sources such as diesel pumps or manual pumping. Instead, ram pumps use the kinetic energy of falling water to draw up more water. AIDFI's project consisted of using an innovative ram pump design that allowed hillside villagers to collect water more efficiently. AIDFI's Dutch-born co-founder Auke Idzenga designed a new and cheap model of the ram pump and had 98 of these devices installed in 68 communities in the Philippines. One of the key design features of Idzenga's ram pump is the use of locally-available parts that allowed users to immediately make replacements of damaged or non-operating parts. Idzenga's design allowed 200 to 1, 000 liters of water a day to be continuously lifted up 200 meters vertically and poured into village reservoirs. After AIDFI installed more of the machines as early as the 1990s, more hillside villagers have been able to collect water without risking going down slopes to collect water and carrying these up back to their villages. Likewise, Idzenga’s ram pumps have also allowed villages to irrigate their farms and maintain livestock. More enterprising villages who have the AIDFI ram pumps can also sell their surplus water to nearby communities who also require water. The ram pumps are also cheap to maintain with maintenance cost amounting to just P7,500 to P9,000 per month, or just a fraction of the cost when using diesel powered water pumps. The pumps are also said to last at least 20 years. AIDFI has been pushing for the widespread installation of Idzenga's ram pump design as it costs much lower compared to diesel-powered water pumps, and have parts that are easily replaceable with locally-made materials. The other winners of the 2007 Ashden Awards were announced during the awards ceremony last June 21. More information regarding AIDFI’s winning project can be found on their website.