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FRONTLINE/WORLD returns to its story on a device that uses the energy of children to pump drinking water throughout southern Africa and discovers what has happened to the promises of the PlayPump and its boosters in the five years since its inception.
FRONTLINE/World investigates one of its own stories, "The Play
Pump," which promised to use a merry-go-round and the power of
children to help meet the dire need for fresh water in southern
Africa. After FRONTLINE/World first aired the story in 2005, major
donors in the United States - and the U.S. government itself -
launched a multimillion-dollar campaign to install the device in
thousands of African schools and villages. Now, correspondent Amy
Costello investigates what happened to those communities, as the
promise of the PlayPump fell short and the device's biggest
American boosters began to back away from a technology they had
once championed. Also in this hour: A journey to the Amazon and the
remote rainforests of Brazil, where several major American
companies are on the hunt for ways to capture an increasingly
valuable commodity - carbon - as the Obama administration considers
new legislation that would force them to pay for their
pollution.