World Water Day Spreads Awareness
In commemoration of World Water Day, the Engineers Without Borders group sponsored a presentation on the various projects the group has taken on.
Engineers Without Borders is a nationwide organization set up at different universities, said the organization’s president, Cody Moultrie, a master’s student in hydraulics engineering.
He said the group was founded in 1992 at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. The USU chapter has been focusing on the sanitation of water in poor countries around the world. For “each one of these projects,” Moultrie said, “their main focus has been on getting clean water and getting sanitation in general.” The presentations were given by four Engineers Without Borders members who were part of the teams which have completed various projects around the world. In the last few years, the USU chapter has worked on projects in Mexico, Uganda and Peru. James Beardal, from the group that traveled to Mexico, said, “We went down to an orphanage called the Gabrielle house.”
The orphanage houses about 45 kids, Beardall said, and most of them are handicapped and have diseases such as cerebral palsy, and a lot of them have HIV as well. Along with soil and health surveys and evaluations, group members taught the people in charge of the orphanage how to properly maintain their water filters. One of the other groups that traveled to Peru last year was led by Cristina Jones. The main goal of their group was to install pipelines as well as a solar water-heating facility.
“We hand dug the holes,” Jones said. “Walking up stairs at 13,000 feet, you feel 80 years old, so it was pretty hard for the digging.”
The pipes and facilities built by the group helped make their final project, a public restroom, complete with showers. Jones and the other members created a solar heating element to the water tanks on the roof of the building. When completed, the showers could produce 40 gallons per minute at 25 pounds per square inch, and at 1 p.m., the shower could reach a temperature of 50 degrees.
“We felt we were fairly successful,” Jones said.
Along with building the facility that helped local people have safe water to use, Jones tested the product herself.
“I showered right before we left,” Jones said. “It was warmer then it had been … so it was worth it.” At the conclusion of the presentations, the coordinator, Saleh Taghvaeian, described the reason for completing the projects and praised the group members.
“Every day, 4,000 kids die from diarrhea from drinking dirty water,” Taghvaeian said. “If I were to summarize what the Engineers Without Borders do, I would say that they save lives.”
Moultrie agreed the projects the group completes are a form of humanitarian aid.
“The projects that we do are designed to increase quality of life,” he said. “One of the main things we always try to do is help the community.”
Along with promoting Engineers Without Borders and explaining the projects completed so far, Moultrie extended an invitation for anyone who would like to be a part of a future venture. Anyone can go, he said, not just engineering majors.
“The projects get done, and a lot of good happens,” he said.