Collaborative innovation brings safe, sustainable water solutions to families in need.

The Rose-Hulman community thrives on connections of many kinds, including with alumni, their families, as well as all of the companies and organizations and innovators with ties to the institute.

Allen “Skip” Olinger is well aware of the value of connections. He’s the father of an alum whose first job involved a connection initially made through the Rose-Hulman family. And his parental knowledge of Rose-Hulman helped him to connect the dots between Rose-Hulman Ventures, a not-for-profit organization working overseas and a philanthropic organization supporting that important human services work.

It’s a story that goes back a few years, when Olinger was on the board of a friend’s family foundation, the KHR Family Fund. The philanthropic group had a special interest in creating greater access to water in South Sudan, and among other things decided to support a nongovernmental organization known as Water for South Sudan.

As shared in an earlier article here, that organization’s focus was drilling new water wells and rehabilitating existing wells in South Sudan. Each of the hundreds of wells it has enabled can provide safe water for as many as a thousand people.

But the group was having issues with well pump failure, so Olinger helped Water for South Sudan and the KHR foundation make the connection with Rose-Hulman Ventures to analyze the mechanical problem. “I know Rose-Hulman and know they have Rose-Hulman Ventures, so I put the two together,” he recalls.

With that connection made, the team in Terre Haute analyzed the well pump issue and engineered a solution. KHR then funded all of the testing and deployment of the pump handles, Olinger says.

“We’ve installed 30 of the reengineered pump parts, pump handles and chains and top connector rods,” says Gary Prok, an engineer for Water for South Sudan. “We are going back every three to six months to look for signs of wear, which we don’t expect to see. We’ll keep tracking it for at least five years, but expect to see success. So far so good!”

With that success in hand, Rose-Hulman Ventures and Water for South Sudan embarked on another project. “The other initiative was the creation of a surface water filtration system,” Prok explains. The idea was to employ solar-powered pumps to bring in water from a contaminated surface water source, run it through a filter into a storage tank, and then eventually pump water out of the tank through finishing filters. Local residents would use the system to fill the jerry cans that they set atop their heads to transport clean water back to their homes.

“The system was developed at Rose-Hulman Ventures and was tested onsite there,” Prok says. “They put together a nice instruction booklet and palletized everything and shipped it to South Sudan.” The organization is now making preparations to have the system installed in South Sudan.

Olinger notes that it’s hard for people living in America to imagine what an impact projects such as these can have on lives in South Sudan. “We just take water for granted,” he says. There, on the other hand, families must send someone to walk miles every day to bring back water, which may not even be clean. That job often falls to women and girls in the family, and is such a major daily task that there is little opportunity for education or a life beyond gathering water.

“That is their whole day. They can’t go to school—it is a real problem,” Prok observes. “Helping them get water is the first domino in helping them emerge from a subsistence economy. You supply water, now a girl doesn’t have to spend her whole childhood schlepping water. They start becoming more of a developed culture.”

“That is the power of small organizations like Water for South Sudan, that a few people can make a huge difference in people’s lives,” Olinger says. “It has a huge impact for people who live in a desperately poor, drought-stricken country.”

It’s just one example of the remarkable things that can happen through the power of connections—in this case fueled by a parent’s knowledge of the skills available at Rose-Hulman Ventures and the need for those insights half a world away. The connection that enabled the Water for South Sudan project also led KHR to make a subsequent direct donation to Rose-Hulman to fund a scholarship, Olinger adds. “Our family also has a smaller foundation, and we have been contributing to Rose the last 10 years for various projects, including some for the mechanical engineering department,” he notes.

Rose-Hulman students become alumni who stay connected, parents bring their own connections, businesses and innovators stay connected—and amazing things happen when all of the dots get connected, Olinger says. “It is a terrific, powerful network and is one of the great things about going to Rose.”