#MEET Water Pacific
This is a short interview we conducted with Abel Quiroz, the creator of Water Pacific. If you like this project and would like to vote for it, click here.
1. Please, tell us a bit about yourself: where are you from and what is your background?
Born on 7 September 1985, Department of Antioquia, Colombia.
2. Can you describe your idea or project in two sentences?
WATER PACIFIC implements an eco-efficient technology using an atmospheric water collector that has the ability to supply drinking water to remote communities.
3. How did you get your idea or concept?
Abel saw the need to develop an innovative project during his three first months of 2012 at the automotive chain of the SENA’s Technological Center of Automotive Mechatronics (CTMA in Spanish), where he observed the air conditioning systems and how these systems generated a lot of stored water within their systems, water that dropped down later on and was collected likewise in buckets, buckets that were thrown out once filled. Then, an idea came to him. He wanted to design a different but eco-efficient mechanism to seize that water. Then, he started the design and research of projects carried out in other countries, what took him to create the first prototype to be useful in remote areas with no or limited access to drinking water.
4. What is unique about your idea/project and how does it benefit mankind?
Within the project, adaptation and mitigation are integrated. That helps various means to boost different mechanisms of life of the local population against the different effects of climate change, and at the same time, leads to increasing the offer of services in the local ecosystems as well as a higher diversification of income sources and economic activities.
For example, a project designed to help farmers to increase their resilience to climate change and to diversify their income could include a viable mechanism to supply water from the environment in times of drought and in areas where the water supply is difficult to reach.
Also, it is intended to consider for its deployment the results of programs and initiatives related to development models and climate change. This is why the emphasis of the design is focused on the immediate needs of the population.
Moreover, if an adaptation project includes activities that help to mitigate climate change, it is likely to benefit the communities in these affected areas. Besides, its benefits could be reflected and replicated at a global scale.
5. Describe yourself as an entrepreneur in one sentence
Innovation requires a culture that values entrepreneurship and those individuals prepared to take risks.
6. How do you deal with people that doubt your abilities/initiatives?
We do not deal with doubt successfully by ignoring it or denying it.
7. What are you afraid of or what keeps you up at night?
What keeps me awake at night, though, are those who have never heard or who do not yet believe. This is the issue that keeps me awake at night.
8. According to you, money is a synonym for.....
Quality and time.
9. If you could rid the world of three things, what would they be?
Maybe we're foolish and haven't learned anything, but we don't think there is anything we would do differently if we were to start again. But just maybe, we can bequeath our grandchildren seas that haven't dried up, deserts with clear limits, clean air and water to cultivate healthy and natural food.
10. What are the benefits you take from the Entrepreneurship Campus?
The barriers to business development, balancing risks and rewards and promoting a society that values entrepreneurship.
11. What do you like more about the Entrepreneurship Campus?
Innovation requires a culture that values entrepreneurship and those individuals prepared to take risks, who are precisely the ones who know how to make money from knowledge.
12. Which idea/project do you like most?
Creating Furniture pieces and light fixtures using RECYCLED materials
13. Please, include a link to a video if you have one.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/z_3o4umeCHA
NOTICE: If you want to see more submitted ideas and projects at the Youth Citizen Entrepreneurship Competition, visit BEST IDEAS and BEST PROJECTS and VOTE for the ones you think deserve to WIN the Competition!
