This is an archived post from 2018 — before the electric option was added with the Village Drill Hybrid. Specs and other information in this post may be outdated.
Beginning of WHOlives
John Renouard founded the nonprofit WHOlives in May 2010, with a mission to bring clean water to developing communities through a self-sustainable process.
The acronym “WHO” stands for water, health and opportunity. WHOlives works to create opportunity not dependency, understanding that poverty cannot be cured, it can only be replaced by economic growth. They foster the belief that the only way to get out of poverty is through clean water. Clean water leads to better health and more opportunities for children and adults.
Designing the Village Drill
In order to fulfill their mission, WHOlives commissioned the Brigham Young University Engineering department in Provo, Utah to design the Village Drill. It was a capstone project, with a directive from WHOlives to make a machine that could access water 250 ft below the surface using primarily human power. A number of people thought that this project would prove to be an impossible feat—nothing like it had ever been built before. The students succeeded, bringing us the Village Drill as we know it today. Now, in partnership with dozens of organizations, the Village Drill Inc. as it’s own entity is most proud of locking arms with these well established, well respected groups in fulfilling their mission of bringing clean water to the world.
By creating the Village Drill (a human-powered water drilling rig) clean water can now be brought to millions of people. The delivery of this clean and plentiful water will provide new hope to the families of the 3.75 million people that die EVERY year and the nearly 1 billion who suffer every day from scarce and contaminated water.