BYU team brings clean water to tanzania

FOR ITS CAPSTONE PROJECT, A BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY TEAM DESIGNED AND IMPLEMENTED A HUMAN-POWERED DRILL WITH MOTORIZED FUNCTIONALITY TO PROVIDE THE MUCH-NEEDED RESOURCE TO REMOTE POPULATIONS IN AFRICA.

WHEN OUR TEAM OF SIX ENGINEERING SENIORS at Brigham Young University was assigned to the human-powered borehole drill project, we knew that there was a slight possibility of traveling to Africa. Little did we know then, however, that after eight months of working closely with the sponsoring company, WHOlives.org, we would actually find ourselves in Arusha, Tanzania, reaching clean water with the very drill we built in Provo, UT.

In the Summer of 2010, WHOlives.org pitched their project idea to BYU Capstone, a structured product development program that uses a real design project from a sponsoring company in industry to function as the students' two-semester-long senior project. After seeing the desperate need for clean water in Tanzania, they wanted to create an inexpensive borehole drill that could drill a 6-in hole up to 250 ft into the ground-using only human power.