Engineers Without Borders teams to travel to Central America to assess needs, offer solutions

By Michelle Jin     4/16/09 7:00pm

Putting aside problem sets and final projects, students in Rice's chapter of Engineers Without Borders will travel throughout Central America to serve communities in need this summer. According to its Web site, EWB-USA is a national, nonprofit organization dedicated to providing service to fulfill the basic needs of communities in developing countries. Members of Rice-EWB are working on one of four student-led projects in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Honduras. These projects focus on various aspects of helping local communities, from installing water storage tanks to launching educational campaigns about how to sanitize their water.

All EWB trips begin with an exploratory trip, where project members determine which community they will work in. The exploratory trip is followed by an assessment trip, when EWB students will work with the people in the community to determine what services will best suit their needs.

"What's nice is that we don't impose a project that we come up with on them," project leader Maggie Murphy said. "We have them develop the projects and we make sure that what we're going to implement is something that [the locals] want and that they need and that they recognize will solve their problems."

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El Salvador

From May 4-17, eight students on EWB's El Salvador team will travel to the community of El Pital to install piping for the distribution of water to that area. The project began in 2006, when members of the team traveled to El Pital and discovered that because the community resided on a hill, it was difficult and unsanitary for community members to get water from a spring below the hill, project leader Samantha Teltser said.

Murphy said the unsanitary water affected residents' hygiene and quality of life.

"The people who live below that spring get the water currently, but the people who live above it have to walk down the hill, collect the water and jug it, and then climb up the hill," Murphy, a Martel College sophomore, said.

She said the team's project involves collecting water in a lower storage tank, purifying it, pumping it up the hill and distributing the water to community members.

For the past three years, the El Salvador team has built the water storage and purification system, and on this trip the team will install the piping.

Teltser, a Will Rice College junior, said they plan to complete this project soon.

"This trip we will bring the piping to the homes and in December we'll go for hopefully the last time and install the pumps and get the whole system running," she said.

Nicaragua I

Six students on the Nicaragua I team plan to travel to the town of Collado on an assessment trip from Aug. 2-10. They completed an exploratory trip over spring break, when they visited multiple communities and decided to work in Collado, a community that is in need of a school building, electricity and running water, project leader Anna Duenas said.

Before the start of the project, the team must go on an assessment trip to take data to determine how to implement their project. They plan on making measurements, deciding where to place the new constructions, and take health surveys, Duenas, a Will Rice junior, said.

On this trip she said the team will gather information to plan out the specifics for the Collado project, which include constructing a rainwater catchment system, a solar panel lighting system and building a school. The team also plans on taking an educational approach to instruct community members on how to maintain their water filter system.

In January, the Nicaragua I team discontinued their bridge project, which they began in 2004, because they decided it was both structurally and economically too difficult to carry out, Duenas said.

"We decided that it was unfeasible for our chapter to handle," Duenas said. "For economic reasons, it would have cost upwards of $100,000 dollars. For safety reasons, because we've never had experience ever building a bridge [and] in terms of constructability, the terrain was really daunting."

The team has handed that project over to the Milwaukee School of Engineering's chapter of EWB, which has had more experience with building bridges, Duenas said.

Nicaragua II

Seven people from the Nicaragua II team will be traveling to Pueblo Nuevo del Sur from April 27 to May 5. They will be wrapping up a water supply system project that began in December 2007, project leader Amy Liu said.

Pueblo Nuevo del Sur is a farming community that has relocated from the hills to the central areas of Pueblo Nuevo in order to get access to more resources. A government-built well is the source of clean water for the people of that community, and the Nicaragua II team has installed a tank and a pipeline system for the well, Liu, a Baker College junior, said.

On this trip, she said they will install a pump and the electrical system to power the pump.

"We collaborate with the local government in Nicaragua, and they will be helping us maintain the pump when we are gone," Liu said. "So if there are any problems, they'll work with the community to maintain the system."

Although the team will be finished with the installation of the water supply system after this trip, Liu said they plan on going back to the community afterwards.

"We definitely plan on returning because we want to check up on our system and take data to see how this is affecting the community," Liu said. "Other than that we are also thinking of starting a new project in that community, because they are really great people, and we'd like to work with them more."

Liu said the team is considering projects such as building a small health clinic, a small community meeting house, or another water system in the community.

Honduras

The Honduras team recently completed an assessment trip to the community of Las Crucitas over spring break. They took house-to-house surveys to determine community needs, held meetings with community members and took topographical data to assess the area for implementation of their project.

Las Crucitas lacks electricity, sanitary water and knowledge on maintaining sanitation, project leader Dan Calderon said.

The Honduras team plans on taking steps to give the community sanitary water in addition to launching an educational campaign to teach community members about maintaining sanitation, project leader Siegfried Bilstein said.

"We'll rebuild their current water access point, which is this sink-like thing called the pila," Bilstein, a Wiess College sophomore, said. "We'll give them public baths, because currently they bathe with the same water they clean the dishes in."

During their initial assessment trip, the team began talking with community members about how to improve sanitation, Calderon said.

"We wanted to provide them with some simple, easy solutions to improve water that they drink," Calderon, a Lovett College sophomore, said. "One of the things that we found to be pretty useful is this thing called SODIS - solar water disinfection, where all you use is a soda bottle, and you put water inside it and leave it in the sun for six hours. This ends up purifying the water."

The team will need to design and submit the specifics of their project to EWB-USA for approval before they can be implemented, Bilstein said, adding that the team plans on traveling in December.

Bilstein said team members chose to work with Las Crucitas both because they believe that the project was in their scope and that they would also help the community receive more government notice.

Out of all the communities they visited on their exploratory trip, Las Crucitas was best-suited for the team in terms of how much they could accomplish and how big of an impact they would leave on the community, Bilstein said.

"It was very heart-wrenching to see this community with one main point for water access, no electricity, [and] an exposed pipe that was broken in several places," Bilstein said. "The way we heard the community being described by others working in the area is that its largely forgotten by the government, so we want to help put them on the map and be their liaisons in their own municipality.

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