Well, Greg Bixler and Abe Wright, welcome to Think Global, Do Justice. How are you guys doing today? Great, thanks so much. Yeah, doing well, thanks Brandon. Well, I'm excited to have you guys on. We're going to get into some really crucial topics that I know a lot of our listeners are going to be interested in, specifically because we're not just talking about global development and wash and nonprofit life and all of that, but we're going to be getting in specifically around innovation.
And I feel like what you guys are doing at Design Outreach is really cutting edge in that regard. But there may be some of our listeners that haven't heard of you guys potentially. I would love to maybe just take a moment to have you guys introduce yourselves to our audience and even share a little bit about how God led you into the field of global development. Maybe start with Greg. Yeah, that's a great question. It all started about 15 years ago for me.
So Design Outreach, we're a Christian humanitarian engineering ministry, and we create practical engineering solutions to help alleviate global poverty. And we come alongside other Christian ministries and help to improve what they're doing. And this really all started... About 15 years ago, I went on a short -term missions trip that changed my life. And I was in Central Asia. And I saw extreme poverty for the first time. But I also saw missionaries who were using their occupation in missions.
This is like business in mission. And I was working as an engineer and doing sort of equipment development work. And I came back to my cubicle in Columbus, Ohio, and I started to think, what can I do as an engineer? know, if these other guys who are like business majors and English majors and I think an accountant. if they could do this as mission, what could engineers do? And so pretty quickly, I got connected with a longtime missionary from the Central African Republic.
And I remember sitting down with him with one of his workers that were traveling through the US on sort of fundraising plan. And I remember talking with him and I asked him, what are some of the biggest challenges you're facing? And right away he said, Greg, we put in these water pumps, but. They break down after just a short period of time and we have to go back and fix them and it's really hard, it costs a lot of money, it's not sustainable.
If you could just make a better pump, it would change everything. And so that's how Abe and I ended up meeting. Abe was actually on the board of directors of that same organization. And our, our common missionary friend, was talking to Abe about these guys in Columbus, Ohio and how we were going to fix all the world's problems. And I'll turn it over to you.
Yeah. And my story began actually the mid nineties when I was in high school, going into my senior year, I, I took a trip to Southern California and, we, we crossed the border for a few days and that was the first time for me to see that type of poverty firsthand. And, you know, I grew up in Indiana, so I thought Southern California was really cool. And then I went to Mexico and I realized how good I had it and Indiana is not too bad.
know, God's given me a lot and God really got a hold of my heart at that moment and I was planning on going to engineering school but every time I think about engineering, it was one of those moments, a few moments in my life where I felt like God was almost audibly speaking to me like saying, and what about missions and what about what you saw in Mexico? you know, back in the 90s, like groups like Engineers Without Borders didn't even exist back then. And I was like, what do you mean, God?
I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I feel like you're saying engineering, you're saying missions. And so I just felt like, well, I guess I'm supposed to try to pursue both. And that kind of led me on a journey to where I am today. I went to Messiah University, ended up working for J &J and was invited to be one of the founding board members for Water for Good and was gathering coworkers kind of the same way Greg was doing like, hey, let's figure out how we can help.
volunteer and during one of the trips Jim Hocking, the founder there, talking about Greg and introduced us. I got home and I had a call with Greg and it realized we had a lot of the same common purpose and passion and that was a phone call that changed our lives. That was really the beginning of design outreach back in 2010. And that's awesome. And yeah, a few different things, especially as you were talking Abe, in that, that organization was Water for Good, right?
Yeah. Which, which friends of the show as well, we featured them earlier this year doing important work. I love that how one engagement can lead to another and even feeds into the work that you're doing now at Design Outreach. And, and I'm glad you like Southern California. It is my homeland. It is interesting.
It is an interesting paradigm where you can be in San Diego and be like in kind of like the lap of luxury in certain neighborhoods down there and then just cross the border and you are just yeah it's just like right in your face totally different world totally different socioeconomic you know situation just down in Tijuana and it's just a reminder that our global neighbors are much closer than sometimes we assume from from wherever we might States.
So we have this question that we ask everyone, anybody that comes on the show, and I'll start with Abe this time. Abe, why do you think it's important for Christians to not only think about their own family and their own community, but also consider the needs of other people globally? You know, that story you just told of being in San Diego and having Tijuana next door reminded me of a similar story being here in Columbus.
You know, we do work in Haiti, and Haiti has been a country that has been ravaged by political instability, war, chaos. And recently on the news here in Columbus, there was this huge story where Haitians were being trafficked here. to Columbus and promised a job, promised housing, and they were put up in this condemned apartment complex. And there were hundreds of people living here. So you're right.
You know, the world is here and I appreciated being able to know the background and have compassion and hear what was going on and kind of know the context. think, I think Well, to answer your question, think, first of all, I think this is what God wants us to do.
You know, he wants us to care about our neighbor and our neighbors, not just the person living next door, but you know, the, the neighbors, the, the immigrant who was brought here under false pretenses, you know, the neighbor is our friends in Malawi who are going through a drought right now and don't have food to eat.
And I think from a practical perspective, especially for us as Americans, it helps us realize, kind of like me when I was back in, know, 17 years old in Mexico, realize what we've been given and what resources we have and not just living in a bubble or focused on our own problems, but realizing what an opportunity we have in this life to use our resources to help. share and show God's love and build his kingdom. Yeah, absolutely. Greg, what would you add? Yeah, no, that was really good.
You know, I think it just goes back to Matthew 712. Do unto others as we'd have do unto us. the world, as Abe was saying, is a much smaller place than it was 10, 20, 50, 100 years ago. We can't ignore the problems that they're either on a screen or we can get on a plane and fly across the world and see it. And God's giving us a choice. Do we?
Do we use the abundance and the knowledge, the resources, the time available we have for his kingdom, or do we use it to make our lives just a little bit easier and more comfortable? Do we use it to get ourselves ahead at the expense of others? And in the end, it's about the Great Commission. It's about bringing the gospel to the corners of the earth. It's about taking care of brothers and sisters who just happen to be born in places where there's a lack of economic opportunity.
You know, I've met some of the hardest, most determined, amazing people in places where the cards are just stacked against them. No matter how hard they try, they're not gonna get out unless there's a miracle. And God's given us this ability to do something. And that's just more of a recent thing. The way technology is, the way engineering and science is, and the economy of this country, we have the ability to change the world if we chose to. And that's very, very exciting for a lot of us.
That's what gets us up in the morning and says, okay, God, you've given us a tremendous vision, a vision beyond our resources. I'm working for God who has everything. So it's just a matter of asking him what he wants me to do. Right. Well, and even going off of that, Greg, I when we talk about recognizing those needs out there, recognizing that there's something we can do, we build up these humanitarian apparatuses and say, let's go do something. Right. And that's what design outreach is doing.
That's what so many of our listeners and organizations that they either support or work for are doing. And on your website, was really, as I was doing the background for this interview, there was something that kind of stood out to me, where Design Outreach talks about transforming what it means to be a humanitarian organization. So that kind of begs the question to me, just a touch, and either of you can jump in. Why is it necessary for humanitarian organizations to be transformed?
because something's not better than nothing. And what we've witnessed is that there's a tremendous lack of innovation in the NGO nonprofit ministry space and community development. And... you know, the same interventions are being done for time after time and it's the same outcomes. And what we learned, and this is how we got into this area of engineering solutions in developing countries, we learned about water pumps.
And if you're like me, I was like the 99th percentile American who had no idea how it worked over there. And since then, you know, we've, I don't know how many trips and how many countries we've been to, but it's, it's been a significant educational experience, you know, going and seeing. And what we came to realize is that, for example, when water pumps get put in, the very typical scenario is a hand pump, which can serve, you know, three, four, 500 people.
Costs, ten, twenty thousand dollars to donors to put it in through their favorite nonprofit organization. There's some sort of training. There's some sort of orientation. There's some sort of tools being dropped off. But the statistics show, and there's been numerous reports showing this, and if you spend any time in developing countries, I know you were in Tanzania for quite a while. I'm sure you saw a lot of broken pumps and it doesn't... a lot.
It's not hard to see them when you're driving around. And what we learned is that 40%, that's four zero, 40 % of all pumps installed are non -functioning today. And the people who do have pumps, there's a couple billion people that have pumps. The very typical scenario is that they're only working maybe 10 or 11 months a year. So it goes back to Matthew 7 -12 again for us. It's due on to others as we'd have due on to us where for me and my family, I have three kids and my wife.
It's like, okay kids, Columbus water supply went down again. Okay, we don't know how long it's gonna be down. Okay, get your jerry cans, we're going down to the river. But dad, that makes us sick. Sorry, too bad, get down there anyways. That's a conversation that you would never have. Right. We want to see organizations raise the standard and raise the bar and say, you know what, we can get 90 % there. Well, we think we need to be 99 % there. And God has all the resources in the world.
Let's not tell ourselves that there's not enough money or talent to fix the problems because that's actually not true. There's more than enough money in even the United States to solve the entire world water crisis. More than enough money. So the question is really, it comes down to are we solving it the right way?
And even in Christian missions, when a community gets a water pump and it breaks down in six months, which is very typical, and you go back and there's a broken pump, I've had grown men and old ladies and people who are half blind begging us to fix their pump. like in tears begging us because it means so much to them to have clean water. It means life.
And when you go back and you put in one of our pumps that doesn't break down and lasts much, much longer, you see gardens and kids playing, you see animals running around and you keep telling people you're doing this because you love Jesus. But when pumps break and there's no water, The gospel message is not the same to them. You bring in a pastor and say, hey, we're going to share the gospel with you. sorry about your broken pump, but come to the gospel outreach program anyways.
It falls pretty flat. And these are things that we feel very convicted of to say, hey, we can do better. You know, we've sent a man to the moon, like, I don't know how many years ago, long time ago. We're trying to go to Mars. We can fix these problems. And we Yeah, as you're talking, there's a few things that kind of come to mind.
And the one that I kind of want to underscore or just at least ask about is, you know, in areas where design outreach alongside partners or directly or however are engaging, what does that government piece look like? What does that like? Are they open? Because we talk about broken pumps. And we're be like, okay, this is, know, clearly the one that was in there was not well constructed if it, know, 40 % of them are no longer working, right? And maybe that's the primary piece of the puzzle.
As you were describing, is an interesting paradigm what you presented there in terms of like in Columbus, Ohio, this would not happen, right? But then I started to think not too far from you is Flint, Michigan. where something like this did happen and actually still persists. And a lot of that even has to do with what was the government's response, right? Did they actually want to go in and fix those water issues that most places in the United States would not have to deal with, right?
So I'm sure there's a question formulating in here somewhere, but I'm gonna, we're gonna dig into Life Pump and some of the other solutions that you guys are providing in Wash, and then now starting to get into the medical field. But I would love to kind of dig into that community piece more, specifically that local community or that local government. When you guys are engaging in that area, how are you guys received? Are they open? Are they willing?
What does that piece look like when you guys are engaging? Yeah, it's interesting the work we do. We're an engineering organization, but it requires a lot more than just designing and building the product. It's not if you build it, they will come type of thing. Like you mentioned, it takes a lot of collaboration. We have a lot of folks that we work with here on, I lead the R &D team, the product development team.
We collaborate with a lot of different industry partners, volunteers from big design firms and corporations. And then we also have offices in two countries currently, Malawi and Zambia. And we've specifically chosen those countries as a place to take our solutions as we're developing them. work with local stakeholders. So that's everything from district level government officials to national level.
And when we did this for Life Pump, we purposely spread Life Pump across Malawi and Zambia, even though it made life more difficult for us because we wanted to get buy -in from different government officials at all levels. And it actually took an act of parliament to get Life Pump approved in those two countries. So they have a standardized list of hand pumps. But we did that work to show them, take the time to show them, this works, it lasts longer, you're going to get better results.
And we have amazing in Malawi. Our regional director Beatrice Chesenga is a lady who can move mountains. She's Malawi national. She grew up collecting water from the river and made her way to England, got her PhD, returned to England to surf, I'm sorry, returned to Malawi to surf her country and leads our team there. And she was able to open doors for us and help get Life Pump approved. And now with our newer solutions, which we'll talk about in a little bit, we're doing the same thing.
So we're bringing NGOs in, we're bringing the government together to show them, hey, we have this product, here's our hypothesis. We think this will make things better, but it's not just marketing, it's not just, hey, trust us, it will, but let's work together, let's pilot it, let's prove out the theory of change, and then implement it together. No, that's really really helpful Abe.
I appreciate that because We know that when it comes to getting water access or any of these kind of big scale issues that we are seeking to address There can be any number of things that need to be addressed and advocated for and you guys have a very innovative model And I want to dig into it a little bit more, but it always kind of makes me think you know What are those other pieces? Now you mentioned something in regarding the research and development.
Most nonprofits are not like, we have a research and development. And you know, they're going to see it as a risk, right? Us nonprofits, we have to go out and we have to raise funds through donations and so forth. I'm gonna edit this out. I'm like choking here. Here we go. So a lot of nonprofits are like, we're not gonna invest in research and development. We're trying to feed kids or we're trying to house people or we're trying to, know, whatever. And that's what the donors wanna give to.
So how would you guys respond to concern of donor funds that go to innovation, research and development? And actually, why do you think it's actually important that nonprofits pursue those ends? Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. We love to talk about this topic. And it kind of goes back to what Greg was saying earlier about raising the standard. Like if the standard or the status quo is 60 % functionality for pumps, why would we keep doing that and pouring billions of dollars into that?
You know, we have to innovate to get better results. We were chatting about how Apple over the last 10 years spent 138 billion dollars. You the iPhone didn't just appear. You know, there's a reason we all love this thing, you this device that we keep in our pocket. You know, it's there was a lot of money that went into that and that's purely just product development. That's not even just, you know, manufacturing costs. That's that's product development.
And so, you know, it's kind of ridiculous to expect it's a double standard. like, OK, well, we want the nonprofit world to do better, to do more, to be more efficient, to serve more people and do it with excellence. And but You can't innovate, you you don't have any funds to innovate. You have to just, it has to just go to implementation. And I, we, you know, I think we've, we've made life harder for ourselves by kind of pushing against that.
You know, we're trying to say, no, that's not, it's not the case. It would be a lot easier for us to go out and get funding for, you know, like, let's just say we just, for the rest of our career, we just wanted to put more and more life pumps in. And we just said, that's all we do. It would, you know, life would be easier for us from a fundraising perspective, but we've decided that's not who we are. We're solving problems.
We're a problem solving organization and we're working on in multiple areas in water, sanitation and healthcare because we see huge issues that need to get fixed and we don't wanna just sit back and just let them go. And from my perspective too, I worked as an engineer at Johnson & Johnson for 20 years. You know, Johnson and Johnson is a huge healthcare organization and they do good around the world. have some things they do in global health.
I personally got to see how they would speak about doing developments in global health, providing lower cost medical devices, but struggled to implement that and struggled to get that going because it really wasn't a part of their business model. It ended up becoming more of a special case, kind of like a bit of charity and whenever budgets were cut, that was one of the first things to go.
And, you know, I think they've done some good things around like vaccines and Ebola for instance, but when it came to like devices, like it was a struggle and a challenge and they're in, as it most engineers like sitting in an office somewhere in the U S they don't really understand the context. It's really understand the requirements. So if I'm designing for a hospital in the U S I'm gonna make certain assumptions.
Like there is HVAC, you know, there's not dusty air blowing through the ward, the hospital ward. They have electricity all the time. They have supply chains. So they have trucks coming to the hospital every day to deliver new supplies. So consumables aren't an issue. So if you go to a place like our, have a team right now that's just leaving for a Kapsovar Mission Hospital in Kenya and they're establishing a partnership with them.
If I go to CapsAWR and I start looking at what are their needs and constraints, it's completely different. And you can't just take a device that was developed here that's complicated and expensive and expected to work and be sustainable in a setting like CapsAWR or many other mission hospitals and low resource settings where we work. So there's innovation that's needed there. And that's often what happens. Let's take what works here, let's put it there.
It doesn't work and we're scratching our heads wondering why doesn't that work? Well... That's what we do. We try to understand what are the requirements and how can we make something that's sustainable and that's going to still provide the same results, still help patients heal, still provide water all the time, but do it in a setting where there's less resources. Yeah. And Greg, you were speaking to this somewhat before we hit record as well.
I mean, you know, as the, as the, as the executive over there, I mean, what does this look like for you guys? And why don't you think more nonprofits are, dedicated to this R and D approach? Yeah. Well, first of all, know, innovation costs money and it takes time. And, and a lot of times it's, it's identifying what should the appropriate standard be, you know?
and I think that that's a struggle for a lot of, mission organizations and ministries where it's the something is better than nothing mentality where it's, well, they're getting river, they're getting river water, you know, and there's crocodiles down there. So we're going to put in a pump At least it works 10 months a year. Aren't we doing great? Well, those other two months, well, hey, 10 months is better than 12 months, right?
And not to then actually major impact, which is looking at things like, well, what happens when you don't actually have water for a month or two a year? And what we've come to see is, people, their decision -making is affected dramatically.
For example, they won't plant a garden because when the pump breaks, in unexpectedly, which it does without warning many times during the dry season, during the dry season, when they're the hungriest, they will invest a little bit of money in seeds to plant a garden because they're afraid when the pump breaks that there won't be enough water for the little garden. So therefore they get even hungrier and more desperate. And they just continue slipping further and further into this, this poverty.
and I think also the other thing is to underline, we're creating practical engineering solutions. So sometimes research and development, know, like coming back from like a university background, know, it's, guys in the lab coat or gals and, they're mixing chemicals and, and writing reports. You know, I once saw a sign on a window of the chemistry lab at Ohio State University. It said, and I love this so much. I was like, I need to meet this person who put this up.
It said, solving, creating solutions to problems that don't exist. Creating solutions to problems that don't exist. And that's what some people think research and development is. And to be honest, it might be. And what we're talking about is practical, practical problem solving.
It's taking, it's taking existing knowledge of how engineering works, using tools that are readily available, packaging them in a way that's appropriate for the environments in which half of the world's population live in. And I think that there's a giant stakeholder gap.
which is what creates this challenge, where the stakeholder gap is there's the people in communities, and then there's the people who are providing funding, and then there's the people in the middle who are creating the narrative. And so oftentimes the people who give financially are inadvertently making decisions for people in the community. People they've never met, people they have no idea how they think, how they live.
And It's like me saying, Brandon, I know what kind of food you and your family like to eat. And so I'm going to buy you a gift card to a restaurant without knowing at all what kind of food your family really likes, right? And then I'm going to say, you better like it and you better smile and give me a nice picture to send back to donors who provide a gift card. So it's really stakeholder gap there, yeah, getting all the stakeholders to voice their opinion and to find solutions.
I mean, what you're describing there, even in terms of like, well, what happens when you do have a gap and what happens when it happens in the bad time of the year? I think we sometimes will, unfortunately in our fallenness, say, well, that's not my problem. And just kind of like you said, well, we did something, even if it had significant gaps that were presented. And I appreciate the emphasis on R &D.
I mean, there, let me kind of look talking about stakeholders, your guys's own donors, understanding that design outreach is involved in innovative work, is involved in research and development. What does that play? I work, so my full -time job is with an organization called Care Portal, which is a technology organization that operates here domestically within the US. And big emphasis technological solutions.
You if we can have people, you you mentioned Apple and Johnson and Johnson at Care Portal, we're like, well, if you can, you know, easily get a taxi ride through Uber, you know, and what does it look like if we apply that type of concept to foster care, right? And again, 501c3 nonprofit, you know?
So these are things that that our organization is always kind of thinking through here domestically in terms whether it's refugee resettlement or foster care or how can we get more support to families that need it.
You guys are doing that, but I kinda wanna, when you guys are talking with your donors and say, we're doing this and it's innovative and maybe this idea is gonna pan out and it's gonna have this kind of like huge effect, whereas other products don't, but it may also not pan out and it may not. be an effective solution.
I mean, how do you guys kind of position that when you're talking with your own donor stakeholders as a nonprofit and who are those donors that say, yes, this is where we want to invest our funds? What are some of the kind of characteristics of those people? Yeah, I can start it. want to take that one? It takes a lot of education, and it takes finding people who understand what that means. So we have different ways of fundraising. for example, our engineers are support raised.
in their positions. So they'll go and support raise under our model and training in order to pay for their salary and benefits. And so that's a lot of one -on -one conversations and saying, hey, we're going to change the world by creating innovative solutions and it's going to require, you know, developing solutions, testing them, piloting them, know, iterating on the ideas.
And largely speaking, those donors have relationships with that individual and they say, hey, we believe in you and we believe this is a vision that God's given you and we won't be part of that mission. And then you have the other kind of donor who, you know, we work sometimes with like either Lions Clubs or Rotary Clubs or churches and we'll get up front and say, hey, we're, you know, we're putting in water pumps and these communities desperately need water and it's part of a larger pilot.
So we have an engineering mentality behind it saying, hey, we want to do a thousand pump pilot of this new solution, the life pump. And in order to do that, we're asking churches, individuals, companies to fund one or more of those communities to get a life pump. And so then the message is around water. And it's a very easy entry point. It's like the easy entry end of a pool. Very easy to wrap your mind around. Women, children desperately need water.
People are getting water from rivers that are dirty and there's crocodiles. I've met kids even recently who lost an arm due to a crocodile attack. These are things that should not happen in 2024. They just simply shouldn't happen. So it really pulls at the heartstrings and people want to give out of compassion and they don't really care about the solution itself. You know, they trust us that we have a great track record. We've had pumps running continuously over 10 years now.
We have a solution where we can remotely track how much the pumps are being used and you can go to our website and see that. So they love that stuff. They love that tech. But that's really, you know, then it's when we deepen relationships with individuals that they kind of see under the hood even more. You know, they're like, okay, you've delivered something that really works. We have a lot of volunteers. Last year we logged over 12 ,000 volunteer hours, mostly engineering hours.
So a lot of companies, individuals come to us and are part of our project teams. A huge valuation of time because these are very high -end engineering people. and then they're the ones who say, I get it. Like I just spent, you know, a hundred hours, 200 hours of my time, 500 hours working on this, this development, solution. Okay. You guys need some money for, for R and D. Okay. I'll donate to that. then because they get it, but it is definitely harder, to get funding from many foundations.
because they hear R &D and they're like, nope, you know, I wanna fund practical solutions, but just because something should happen doesn't mean it will happen unless somebody comes along and says, I'm going to put the hard work into developing that solution. And one thing I wanted to highlight here is we're... we're coming alongside our brothers and sisters around the world, some 4 billion plus people who live in desperate poverty.
And so we're trying to solve a problem that the marketplace has not been able to solve, a problem that governments have not been able to solve. And we're trying to do it with not even a shoestring budget, but less than a shoestring budget. This is an extremely hard problem, extremely challenging. And for the people who get it, they give and they give generously. And so we're always looking for people who get it, who say, hey, why is it that pumps keep breaking down? you have a solution to that.
Well, what else could you create solutions to? And we have those conversations more and more too. Yeah, I love that, Greg, and I appreciate the approach as I was listening to you and seeing how you engage, you know, those really critical stakeholders, not just your volunteers, but having volunteers that also donate and support the ministry, I think is really critical. And I mean, the good thing is at the end of that research and development, you come along with fantastic products, right?
So you're talking about tracking a life pump that works for 10 years, as opposed to some of these more traditional hand pumps that maybe last 10 months, right? Well, that's a huge, that's a huge difference, right? I would love if you guys could even just kind of share a little bit. That was kind of like your flagship product. You guys have been working on other things as well, but can you share with us a little bit about Life Pump?
And I'll just tell our listeners, the website for design outreach will be in the show notes. And when I was going through there, I appreciated how you guys were presenting, you know, here's the problem, here's the solution we're providing. And then I don't know how deep I had to click, but you guys had like pictures up and diagrams and this is what this thing is doing. I was like, I am not an engineer. I, but it was really fascinating and, so well presented and well thought out.
Can you guys just share with us a little bit about life pump? What did it, what is it? How is it different from other traditional hand pumps? And then even how do you distribute it out to make that difference in the community? What does that look Even though we had an amazing marketing firm helping us with our new website, they still couldn't keep the engineering out of it. We're notorious for detail.
Yeah. And I was going to even just zoom out a little bit more and talk about like how we develop things. know, Greg was talking about people who give kind of at the end when we have the solution, but we follow a process, a design process. It's based on a human centered design process. So we call it the design outreach way. for appropriate technology development. And you have things at the beginning that are very much more researchy.
it's like, but those are the times when you're in the communities, you're with the NGOs, you're with the government, and you're saying, are we solving the right problems? You can make something right, but it's not the right thing. So really at the beginning, you gotta be there, you gotta take the trips to Malawi, other countries, and you gotta know that you're solving the right problems. And then we continuously test our theory along the way.
So that's when you get into ideation, you come up with your idea, you're testing it, you're putting it in front of different NGOs, different communities saying, is this working? Is it not working? What do we need to change? We have advisory panels on all of our projects that are helping us with this. And then you get to the point where you're like, okay, now we're ready for it to go into a community.
And that's more traditional fundraising where people understand, I'm gonna fund and it's gonna go in. But there are people, there are... funders that we found that get it more at the beginning, like, I'm going to invest because I see that there's this huge unmet need. And we don't know what the solution is yet.
And it's riskier, you know, for people who aren't involved in innovation, aren't involved in maybe product development or startups, or maybe you guys at CarePort will have figured this out and we can learn some things from you and not how to, but you know, but it is a more risky thing because you may get to the end of the ideation phase and be like, you know what? we were not solving the right problem. We didn't develop the right thing. We actually needed to change gears. The market changed.
Something else happened. But to answer your question about... Well, I was going to add, it comes down to value proposition. So we look very closely at the business model behind it. Like, how can it scale? Will it scale through the nonprofit? Because some solutions are scaled through nonprofit. Infrastructure is too expensive for communities to afford. Will it scale through the marketplace? You know, is this, is this something that people could sell, make a profit and want to buy?
And then what is it going to cost to do that distribution? And what's it going to cost? you know, to set these supply chains up. and so we've, you know, even though we work in 12 countries, we continually get inquiries from new countries and we have a much better understanding of what's it actually going to cost to go to a new country. And, and often we weigh that cost and talk to the partner who's requested it and said, Hey, it's going to cost X number of dollars.
And it's usually more than they expect because to do it right costs more. But it comes down to value proposition and finding early adopters who say, hey, I want to change the status quo and they find our solution or we find them. And those are the best partnerships we have. So kind of like Life Pump. Yeah. So to get back to, I think your original question was about Life Pump. We're like a family competition.
sharing is really helpful because it's also saying, you know, there's a proof of concept now. So you talk about value proposition. Well, it's based on traction in, you know, countries of need. And so that's all really helpful. But yeah, fill me in a little bit, Life Pump can compare those products. Well, it's kind of like, you know, Henry Ford, think famously said, if you ask somebody what they want, they would say a faster horse. Right.
And so a lot of times community members are uninspired or unaware of what the possibilities are. So that, that makes it even trickier because we're coming in with a lot of knowledge from, you know, other parts of the world and saying, Hey, maybe we have a solution, but we want to work in partnership with the community. to say, we solving a problem that people think they have? Or are we solving a problem that we think they have? And there's a huge difference there.
And so many times we get it wrong because we're trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist in their minds. And so it's a bit of a discernment to know how far do we push it to say, hey, actually, we wanna demonstrate this to you because you've just never been exposed to something like this to. hey, we're trying to solve a problem that they don't think they have. You know, we're barking up the wrong tree here.
Yeah. Yeah. And for Life Pump, the story began again back, that's how Greg and I met with Water for Good and Jim Hocking was our common connection there. like Greg said, he told us if you can build a hand pump that lasts longer and goes deeper, you'd help a lot of people.
that's, you know, back in the day, back in early 2010s up until I can't remember maybe a few years after that, we were all volunteers and we were all, you know, working day jobs, working at Johnson Johnson, Patel, other industries. And so, you know, things were, progressed a lot slower back then. We were hoping to speed up our process.
Now we are speeding things up significantly, but we were taking trips to the central African Republic, taking our prototypes, testing things out and, learning a lot of things along the way. One of the things we learned is that we really need to have a test, a place to test things here in Ohio before we fly halfway across the world to test our prototypes. we, you know, we started getting things set up here so we can de -risk our products.
And then kind of the part of our story then was, I think it was 2012, war broke out in the Central African Republic and we were not able to go back. And Greg and I were kind looking at each other back then like, is this the end? You know, is this it? Does the project die? And that's when World Vision heard about what we were doing with Water for Good. And they said, hey, why don't you come to Malawi and check things out? We think we have a need for it here.
And Greg and I were on a plane a couple of months later and exploring opportunities. And a few months after that, our very first life pump was being installed in 2013. And that's where we had a lot of momentum going in that pump. actually the one next to it, now we're celebrating 11 years of continuous water from, from those two pumps, 11 years nonstop. But we had a lot of momentum in Malawi and Zambia.
And that's one of the reasons why we ended up having our offices there, because of, the need that we saw in those countries. Yeah. our design challenge was really, can we create a pump that can last years instead of months and can go much deeper? So there's two problems that Life Pump really addresses. And, and one is more obvious than the other. one is the functionality. So we wanted to make a pump that could go for at least five years with zero maintenance.
And that means not a single bolt tightened, not a single, you know, anything. Tires rotated, nothing. I mean, there's no tires in life pump, but you know what I mean? Like not a single thing touched for five years. And that's a tremendous undertaking. That is high performance engineering to get there because some of these pumps, and we can measure this through our satellite based remote sensor. Some of these pumps are used anywhere from five hours a to 20 hours a day.
We're talking about millions and millions of cycles of rotations of things turning and rubbing and touching each other. This is extremely high potential for wear and tear. So we created a pump that could go for at least five years and at five years require only very minimal maintenance. And so a very, very low cost of operations and maintenance would then make it affordable for the community to pay for the And so that's really critical for long -term sustainability.
So in the model of water pumps and water for good, it was called ICDI back then, they really piloted and pioneered this idea of professionalized maintenance, having a circuit rider system going and maintaining pumps. And they were like, hey, we have to visit these pumps two or three times a year to keep them running. If you can make it so we can only visit it once a year, that would save us a lot of money. Well, we're like, well, why once a year? Why not five, you know, once every five years?
Well, it really cuts down the, the, the fewer visits to a pump, the cheaper it is to maintain. The cost of maintaining a pump is not the parts. The parts themselves are fairly cheap. The cost is the transportation. So driving out to these remote villages on these dirt roads require off -road vehicles, very expensive fuel. The, vehicles get beaten. like crazy because of the bad roads. So it costs a lot of money. It might cost hundreds of dollars to deliver a $2 part.
So you can see why this is not being done on a regular basis for most places. So our concept was creating a pump that could last at least five years and before any minor maintenance. And then the other part was pumps that could go deeper. So I remember Jim Hawking telling us, said, hey, we can drill down and hit the water, but the pumps we're using, they can't pull it And so we took the challenge and said, well, how deep can you go?
And most standard hand pumps used in the world can only go to maybe 150 feet in the ground and then get either really, really hard to use or they break down even quicker because of the extra strain of going deeper. And so we took it upon ourselves to go much deeper. So we decided we're going to go to 500 feet and it'll be manually operated. And even a little child could operate the pump at 500 feet.
And what that does is, What happens, and let me back up why depth matters, pumps can only go down to a certain depth before they quit working. Just the physics of the pump, they just quit working well. And what happens is water is getting deeper. The water tables around the world for various reasons, global climate change, whatever the reason is, water is getting deeper.
And so what happens is during the wet season, maybe half the year, maybe three quarters of the year, the water is stuck down, or the pump is stuck in the water. And then for two or three months a year, the water actually drops below where the pump is. And so now, even though there's a pump, the pump is not in the water. And so you can't get any water out. So the pump is non -functional once again.
So if you can put a pump in deep enough to be in the aquifers that produce water all year, now you have water, at least you have water for 12 months a year, if you have a pump that can get it out. And so our challenge was we want to last a lot longer and we want to go much deeper. And that's, and so we did that through design. We, we utilized a progressive cavity pump design through materials. use stainless steel or heavy duty PVC and heavy duty components.
And, and we were determined that we were going to hit these marks and, and create a disruptor that organizations could use in places where no other solution can work. And that's where our pumps are.
We have over 400 life pumps installed around the world They're all installed in places where other solutions can't Man, is my mind is blown right now, actually, to be honest, because what you're describing, Greg, like, I don't know the first thing all I know, like what you alluded to earlier was, you know, having lived in East Africa, have I am I familiar with a lot of broken pumps?
Yes. And each of those broken pumps also had some sort of celebration of the community and the nonprofit and everybody jumping up and down.
And then to be like a year later, useless is is just a waste and a travesty and Those people are no better for that intervention that also cost money, know So was like it wasn't even necessarily like the best investment and here I am I'm like a notorious like hold on to my phone for way too long It's like I have a I have a iPhone here that has been working for years You know, my wife's is even older like, you know, it's like we can actually have useful devices that can last a long time.
And why not make sure that people that need water access have that same? And that's really, really helpful because you could almost wonder, like, is a hand pump a hand pump? Well, apparently not to an engineer and not to a community that actually needs water. So very cool everything that you guys are describing. know, Life Pump is not the only thing that you guys are working on.
You guys have other solutions, whether within Wash or within, I think you guys are now getting into kind of some of the medical practices and so forth. Maybe just share with us a little bit some of those other projects as you guys continue to innovate and address global problems. Yeah, I can take that one. Yeah, we're involved in water, we're involved in sanitation, and we're involved in healthcare. That's kind of the three areas that we've chosen to touch on right now.
You know, we really see ourselves as a global team of problem solvers that's looking at fundamental challenges facing people in low -income countries. And those are the three areas that we've decided to focus on right now. In the future, there may be more. with our team's expertise and where God's led us. That's where we felt called to go. So in the water space, we've talked about Life Pump, we've talked about our remote monitor with Life Pump.
We've recently, in the last couple years, got involved in a project to upgrade the millions of hand pumps. There's anywhere from like five to eight million, depending on who you talk to, of these public domain hand pumps installed around the world. They're open source. These are the ones you probably saw in Tanzania. These are the ones we're talking about when we say studies have been done to show they break on average every six months and take a month or longer to get fixed.
These are the ones that we say are like 40 % are broken at any time. taken on a project because even though we love Life Pump and we think it has its niche in its place, like it solves a problem and there's probably hundreds of thousands of communities that need Life Pump, but not all these millions of pumps are going to get upgraded to Life Pump in our lifetime.
And as much as, you know, a lot of places in the world are going to solar submersible systems and pipe systems, and that's great if there's a sustainability behind it and a plan to maintain them. but there's dispersed communities, rural communities that are gonna rely on hand pumps and these public domain hand pumps for decades. We've done global surveys and we've asked, cause there's often, you know, kind of a shiny new toy, like, hey, let's go fund this new thing, which is great.
You know, we applaud efforts to get pipe water into people's homes. That's great. But we've asked people who are, you know, we're government officials working in this community, how long do you think hand pumps are gonna be around? And you know, up 10, 20, 30, 40, you know, a lot of people say, you 40, 50 years, we're still gonna need them to solve for millions of people.
So we're, we felt convicted to work on a project to provide an upgrade to the hand pumps so that they go from lasting months to lasting years. And we've been really blessed to work with a global team. We, I talked about advisory teams. We have an advisory team now that consists of implementers from around the world.
government officials from different countries in Africa and an amazing design team, including our own design outreach staff, volunteers, plus others from the UK, from Africa that we're partnering with. So it's this really global effort that we are just blessed to lead and using our experience and learning from Life Pump and from other pumps that we've had the opportunity to interact with. to say how can we take these from lasting years, months to years, how can we eliminate corrosion?
Because corrosion is a huge issue and corrosion also leads to lead being in the water, which that's kind of a thing that's bubbling up to the surface now, is actually a lot of these pumps are poisoning people with lead. So we want to eliminate, reduce as much as possible lead from the water as well so that the water is safe and lasts longer for communities. Also in water, know, piped water systems are becoming a thing. We, water kiosks are a big thing.
We've, we've developed a self -closing and lead free valve called the Life Tap. Cause one of the weakest links on a kiosk is, or a tap stand is the outlet valve. You know, you're used to like a, seeing like a little gate valve that you turn the handle on and off on. A lot of them are made from leaded materials like brass. I get to be a part of a working group is out of the UNC that studies different sources of lead and toxic metals.
There's some work being done to show there's surprising amounts of lead in systems and parts. So we're working on creating components like like Wifetap, that would be lead -free and also durable and self -closing and help a kiosk tap stand last a lot longer. And that product's actually available today. We have it available for NGOs that want to use Okay. What else are you guys doing? guys are doing something with a latrine. I've been in my share of latrines. What's the problem a few years ago.
So we were brought a challenge of one of our partners said, we did a study and we noticed in the sanitation world, so toilets were really struggling with uptake. Like people, even the cheapest toilet option, a pit latrine, where it's just a hole in the ground, is still too expensive to be built properly. Because when you build it properly, you line it. and it doesn't collapse.
So if you don't line it, you know, during monsoon season or when it's being, if they do flush it out, dredge it out, the walls get compromised and they can collapse. People die, people get hurt. So they brought us to the design challenge. How can you build a pit latrine that's safe and affordable? So that's something we've been working on. We have a pilot going on in Malawi right now and we think we've come up with a pretty clever design to make it affordable and also very safe. for communities.
Yeah. And then your last question about medical work. Yeah, this is something that's been near and dear to my heart because I worked in medical devices for 20 years and really felt when I came to Design Outreach full -time over five years ago, felt like this is something that we should be involved in. And a lot of our volunteers, because of my background at Johnson & Johnson, also have medical device experience.
So we just started, again, kind of the human centered design process, we just started developing relationships with mission hospitals. You we went to Zimbabwe, we went to Malawi, we have a team in Kenya right now. We have a global advisory board just asking, hey, what are your problems? Like, what are your pain points?
And we did a global survey and we learned about this wound epidemic that's going on in sub -Saharan Africa, especially that where patients are suffering from chronic wounds and surgeons. asked us for an affordable and sustainable negative pressure wound therapy device.
Yeah. One thing I was going to add Brandon too is, know, like as design outreach, we kind of see ourselves as like this, this engineering continuum of subject matter experts that exists to test out and prototype and pilot new solutions. And so we have a very strong human centered design process. We call it the design outreach way. where we are interacting in communities, talking with lot of NGOs.
Abe mentioned the advisory team of doctors and nurses for medical, of NGO leaders for the wash projects. And we're really getting all these stakeholder inputs before we just jump into something. We don't create solutions in a nice conference room and then go out and try to find people to sell it to. We're really trying to get user -polled designs out of this.
And we've learned, like there's been things where we've been like, you know what, that kind of made sense five or six years ago and we made good progress. But you know what, conditions change. know, like solar is changing, self towers in Africa is changing. Like there's all these changes that we can piggyback on and be flexible.
And so we're now starting to see like internationally becoming recognized as a global leader in innovation and organizations are starting to call us and say, hey, Who else is collaborating on these kinds of projects? Who else should we be talking to? Hey, can we pick your brain on this area?
And that's our dream and goal is that we get more and more of those conversations where one of our four core values is collaboration and not be presumptuous that we know everything, but that we want to bring together world experts to the table. We want to lead that team because we need structure and then create practical solutions with our continuum.
And then when those practical solutions are proven and viable at whatever level, then the goal is to spin those out and those become marketplace ready where they can scale up more rapidly. And it's all about impact. We want to impact the 2 billion people who don't have safe water today. We want to impact the 4 .5 billion people who suffer from terrible medical care conditions. And we're only going to do that through lots of partners. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
And I love everything that you're describing because it requires collaboration. The issues that we face in the world, whether we're just in our own local community or looking at stuff throughout the world, you know, the two billion, the four and a half billion, the whatever, those are way too big. mean, we can, you mentioned World Vision.
We could look at an organization like World Vision, which does fantastic work and is like a $1 .5 billion a year organization and be like, they should have it covered. Nope, nope. Even them reaching out to you about Malawi and other people that collaborate. If we don't collaborate, we don't stand a chance. So I love everything that you're describing. I love that that's your guys' ethos. I'm just going to point again, our listeners, go to Outreach .org, Design Outreach's website.
We will have it linked in the show notes as well. But you guys can see the products that they have developed. You can see the results of the innovation that we've been describing. And so amazing to see how it has been impacting communities, how it happens through collaboration, partnership.
And one of the things that I'm reminded of, and this happens whether we're talking with somebody like you guys, your engineers with graduate degrees, or whether we are talking with missionaries, the need for Christians who love God and want to see his kingdom come to actually invest in their craft and to actually be It's like the spiritual quality of professionalism. Like we are not just going to say something is better than nothing.
We are going to strive and we are going to work hard and we are going to improve for the benefit of our neighbor, whether that's globally or around the corner. So love everything that you guys have been describing. All right. We do have one wrap up question that we ask everybody. All right. So I'm going to go to Abe first. Rapid fire. For someone that is pursuing God's heart of justice in the nations, what is one thing that you would recommend that they do, Yeah, I would say be willing to learn.
There's so many, like we said, there's so many groups out there that are doing good work. There's so many resources, books that have been written about how to do it well and how not to do it. You know, like When Helping Hurts is a good book, good place to start. Common pitfalls, often we just want to jump right in and I appreciate not waiting too long, but jumping in and learning, but also... Learn by reading, learn by talking to others, see what else is going on out there.
We often think it's just like a blank slate, there's nothing happening, but there's so much happening and so much that came before us that we can learn from. Yeah, absolutely. You know, love that. you, if, if Phil was on, he would be mentioning. I guess I'll mention on his behalf, when helping hurts is the most recommended book that anybody has ever put out on our podcast. And, Brian Ficker is a friend and he's been on a couple of times himself. So, yeah, keep learning, keep learning.
And that's what this podcast is all about. So that's good. I appreciate that. Hey, how about you, Greg? What's one thing that people should do, in pursuing God's heart for justice in the nation? Thanks. You know, it kind of ties into our name, do, do something. You know, when we were coming up with the name of Design Outreach, you know, kind of funny story. We like the name design and we like the name outreach. And at first we thought we'd call it outreach design.
but that acronym is odd and engineers are already odd enough. So then we flipped it around and we said, wait a minute, it says do because we wanted to do and we just didn't want to talk about it. We just didn't want to watch it on TV or on the internet or hear a missionary at church talk about it, throw an extra 20 in the plate for it. We want to do. get immersed, get involved. And some people that might be earning a lot of money and giving a lot of money.
Some people that might be in the prime of their career, making a radical shift to put that talent and expertise to work. And that's what we need. We need radical transformation and we need people who are on fire for the Lord and they're on a redemptive quest, using praxis terms, to... do something that is tackling a vision bigger than they are, you know, a God -sized vision. And I think God just directs us sometimes one step at a time. And it's important to do something.
And that means start by giving generously your time, talent, resources, funding. It could mean giving sacrificially. And I really believe... God's people can change the world if God's people acted together in that way. Amen. Well, let's do exactly that. Greg, Abe, thank you guys so much for coming on this show. It has been a blessing to learn about your guys' work and so appreciate your guys' approach and how you guys advance God's kingdom in that way. So thanks for coming on the show.
Thanks so much. for having us, Brandon. It's been And to our listeners, may Almighty God who created us in his own image grant us grace to fearlessly contend against evil and to make no peace with oppression. And that we may reverently use our freedom and employ it in the maintenance of justice in our communities and among the nations. To the glory of God's holy name, through Jesus Christ our Lord who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God now and forever.
Amen, and we will see you guys on the next episode of Think Global, Do Justice.