Engineers Without Borders set their sight on the big picture
Whether traversing military checkpoints in Baja, floating the Nile or climbing to Machu Picchu after a day of hard labor, students will begin to realize Engineers Without Borders (EWB) is a student organization unlike any other.
The USU chapter of EWB’s goal is to facilitate global service opportunities for USU, while provide life-sustaining systems to international communities, said Ashleigh Restad, chapter president.
According to the chapter Web site, http://www.usu.edu/ewb/, EWB’s vision is of a world where all people have the knowledge and resources needed to meet basic human needs.
Restad said the USU chapter currently has three active teams, one each in Peru, Mexico and Uganda. Each team is made up of USU engineering students, professional engineers, faculty advisers and other student volunteers. Each team is also paired with an NGO, or non-governmental organization. The NGOs serve as liaisons between EWB and the communities they serve, in some cases even helping to organize the students’ travel.
The NGOs also determine areas of need and provide the EWB teams with project options. Restad said projects in recent years have ranged from water resource management for a small community in Peru to designing and building a complete gray water system for an orphanage in Mexico.
Since EWB is completely student run, the majority of on-site labor takes place during the summer.
Restad said project trips range from a week to a month depending on the project, and although the projects themselves are completed quickly, the planning and design process is ongoing.
“Most of the work is done here on campus. The easy part, relatively speaking, is actually installing what we’ve designed,” Restad said. “Between planning, designing, organizing, making contacts, etc., we’re busy year-round.”
Since the work done by EWB takes place outside of the United States, planning and coordinating provide constant challenges. Chief among them, Restad said, is maintaining an engineering focus while keeping the organization running smoothly.
“As engineers, we’re used to being presented with a problem statement and directly working to solve the problem,” she said. “In this organization, we’re not just given problems on a piece of paper – we have to learn to look at the bigger picture.”
Restad emphasized the need for students from every discipline to participate. The focus of the projects is engineering, but with a more diverse group comes a greater pool of skills with which to help.
“Every person, every skill, has value,” she said.
Restad said the organization is looking ahead, trying to apply what they’ve learned to future projects.
She said the Peru and Uganda teams will be maintaining and expanding projects with their current NGOs, while the Mexico team is partnering with a new organization to extend their help to a larger community.
Along with the obvious benefit to the communities EWB helps, she said, the organization also benefits the students who participate.
Restad said it provides opportunity for travel, service and real world-application of engineering principles. Restad said she hopes it will also help reinvent the way students view engineering.
“We want students to see engineering for its applications, for the good we can do,” she said. “This is a way we can share what we’ve learned with people all over the world.”
–be.ro@aggiemail.usu.edu