Water from the sun

ALESA Desclaude, Association des Lycéens, Étudiants, Stagiaires and Apprentis, of the Georges Desclaude High School (Saintes in the Charente-Maritime district), has been active in Burkina Faso for six years in the village of Zingan, located 300 km south of the capital, Ouagadougou. It has been working in the last 20 years under a twinning arrangement between the two French communes of Contrières and Bergbieten and this village of Burkina Faso, with a population of about 2,000. The projects are carried out by the students of the vocational school, which trains them in various trades, including the water related trades.

To meet the new needs generated by the installation of the dispensary near one of the two existing wells, ALESA has decided to modernize the pumping facilities.

Modernizing the installations to make the water supply secure

The well concerned has been running for about fifteen years. It supplies the school, the school children, the twinning home, the teachers' families, and nearly 300 villagers.
Its water also irrigates an educational truck farming zone. The flywheel pump installed on the well since its commissioning had to be replaced in 2005 by a foot pump, which has broken down repeatedly due to an excessive workload. Since the installation of the dispensary makes it vital to secure the water supply, the nonprofit ALESA, with the grant from the Veolia Foundation, plans to equip the well with a pumping unit powered by solar panels, plus a storage reservoir.