A seesaw to be used as a water pump in  developing countries: this is the very unique project of 12 students from technical and vocational branches in the Collège St-Servais (Asty Moulin school center) in Namur (Wallonia).

This summer, the students will go to Bangladesh, in Shaluka, to install the machine and its ingenious filter system to supply the village school with drinkable water. The seesaw will enable children to have fun while pumping the water, which, after being filtered, will be directly usable.

In this country, the surface water contains numerous microbes and a certain amount of arsenic. In this field technical solutions are hardly applicable at a reasonable cost. The idea of Namur students is therefore timely and surprising, to say the least.

The aim of the project, called “Makers in Tech School” within the framework of the  Creative Wallonia program, is to stimulate the entrepreneurial mind of young people. This program collaborates with different creativity centers, such as Trakk in Namur.

The initial idea came from primary school pupils who had drawn a dream machine to change the world. The technical part was taken care of by twelve students from the Saint-Servais secondary school. The students were supported by their teachers and by the school direction, as well as the group Helping Hand Bangladesh. They decided to engage in an extraordinary adventure: design, produce and install a seesaw, coupled to a water pump and a purification system.

This is a unique professional experience for those creative young people. It also represents a humanist project that could serve as an example for potential commercialization.