Hello All,
I just found out about this: a 14 year old boy named William Kamkwamba, from rural Malawi gets a book from the library that has pictures of windmills. He is inspired, and he builds a prototype, and then a fully functioning wind turbine that generates electricity for his family, on a tower completely from found materials, in about 2 months. Here's a short documentary video about his story:
Moving Windmills: The William Kamkwamba Story | Moving Windmills Project
He has since built a second twin rotor turbine, and they now can pump water out of a deep well. Pretty amazing stuff. He has also spoken at TED: