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My name's Greg Plimpton. I'm a Peace Corps Volunteer here in Santa Barbara, Peru, serving
in the water and sanitation sector. My decision to join Peace Corps came from
a magazine article I was reading before the 50th anniversary of Peace Corps, and I happened
to notice that Peace Corps was founded on March 1st, and that happens to be my birthday.
Us "older" Peace Corps Volunteers come with a lot of advantages. One is life experience.
Our business skills and construction skills have had a lot of time to mellow in practice.
We've picked up a few tricks along the way. Many of us are retired and there's not that
big worry about what's going to happen after Peace Corps.
When I was doing my community diagnostics I discovered that there were an awful lot
of people out here, especially in the beach area and further back in the hills, that don't
have the community water system that I enjoy here in town. They're drinking out of wells,
and those wells are open. The problem is contamination--from the bucket,
from the animals that live near the well, and the dust and dirt that blows in here,
all causes an awful lot of contamination in these wells.
This solar pumping system allows us to close the well up, so they're not using a bucket
anymore. We pump with a little 12 volt pump that's powered by a solar panel and a battery
to hold the charge, that runs the 12 volt pump.
And then this allows us to pump water directly from the well to the house without ever having
to open up the well, so they get water in much greater quantity and much better quality
as well.