VOA慢速英语 图书馆地下室为穷人制作水过滤器

　　From Depths of a Library, Water Filters for the Poor

　　图书馆地下室为穷人制作水过滤器

　　This is the VOA Special English Development Report.

　　The Braddock Carnegie Library in Braddock, Pennsylvania, looks like an ancient castle. The bottom floor was once a bathhouse. Today, it houses a workshop for an arts program. But the library basement also has another use -- as a studio for making ceramic water filters for the developing world.

　　Placing it there was the idea of Richard Wukich, an art professor at Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania. One of his former students, Jeffrey Schwarz, helped remake the basement to use for pottery-making classes for the community.

　　Jeff Schwarz is a potter and a member of the national service program AmeriCorps. He works with volunteers to produce the water purifiers.

　　The original design of the ceramic filter came from a chemist in Guatemala, Fernando Mazariegos. Ron Rivera, a ceramics artist and activist in the group Potters for Peace, saw it and recognized its value.

　　Ron Rivera improved the design after a deadly storm, Hurricane Mitch, struck Central America in nineteen ninety-eight. He also worked with other groups to set up places to make the filters. He died last year. By that time, hundreds of thousands of the filters were in use in developing countries.

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