It’s no secret that much of the world has a hard time accessing clean drinking water. In Latin America and the Caribbean, for example, it is estimated that 36 million people have no regular access to clean water. This doesn’t just mean people are thirsty; unclean water leads to a host of health problems. Water.org states that somewhere in the world, a child dies every minute because of a water-borne illness.

In São Paulo, Brazil, about 12 million people have a difficult time accessing clean water. Terezinha Silva wanted to do something about that. And she did it with four simple steps.

First, she uses PVC pipes to collect rainwater from roofs of buildings. Then, mosquito netting is used as a filter and a second pipe carries the filtered water into a barrel. Finally, a third pipe deals with overflow. There you have it: usable, clean water.

Read “She came up with an invention to save 12 million people. Genius? Kinda.” at Upworthy.