When Cynthia Koenig, a young social entrepreneur from New York, learned that
millions of girls and women around the world spend hours each day collecting
water from distant sources, she decided to create a
new way to help people in poor communities transport water. Called the
WaterWheel, it allows people to roll water in a 50-liter
container versus carrying it in 5 gallon (19 liter) jugs. Koenig estimates that
the WaterWheel can save women 35 hours per week in water transport time, as
well as prevent the physical strain that comes from balancing 40 pounds of
water on top of their heads for hours each day. Every day around the world,
over 200 million hours are spent each day fetching water, often from water
sources miles from home, and this task usually falls to women and girls. By
freeing up valuable time, the WaterWheel allows women to spend time on
income-generating activities that can help pull their families out of poverty. The
time savings also means that there is a greater likelihood that girls will be
allowed to stay in school, further reducing the rate of intergenerational
poverty.
After receiving a $100,000 Grand
Challenges Canada prize to develop the WaterWheel, Koenig founded a social
enterprise company, Wello. The
company is in an early stage of development and has been piloting the
WaterWheel in rural communities in India. Koenig also plans on
continuing to make the WaterWheel itself more useful by adding in filtration,
drip irrigation kits, even a cell phone charger that uses the rotation of the
wheel to charge the battery of the cell phone and give people more access to
essentials like communication and education. To learn more about this invention
and its potential to transform the lives of many girls and women around the
world, check out Koenig's TED talk at http://bit.ly/1gBdpGt and you can read a recent article in
The Guardian about her venture at http://bit.ly/1dMt7Mh. To learn more about how to support
her work, visit Wello's website at http://wellowater.org/
For a
wonderful book about more female innovators and inventors
throughout history, check out “Girls Think of Everything: Stories of Ingenious
Inventions by Women” for readers 8 to 13 at http://www.amightygirl.com/girls-think-of-everything
