The Fort Lewis College chapter of Engineers Without Borders is marking its 10th anniversary this summer by installing running-water systems in a couple of the big world’s small places.
Program coordinators Laurie Williams and Don May, professors in the Department of Physics and Engineering, are in Myanmar and Nicaragua, respectively, with teams of students putting in water systems and scouting new locations.
In the past decade, teams composed of current students, community supporters, alumni and, occasionally, an FLC administrator, have installed pipelines, storage tanks and taps in Ecuador, Thailand and Laos, as well.
“No community can move beyond poverty without (piped) water,” said May, who led the first Engineers Without Borders student team to Thailand in 2005.
Engineers Without Borders doesn’t work through government channels abroad but with partners in target countries that are familiar with local needs. In Myanmar, the FLC visitors collaborate with the Shanta Foundation established in 2006, which now promotes education, health care and economic development there.
“We don’t have contacts in these countries, so we need organizations that do,” May said.
This summer Williams’ team will visit two villages with a total of 275 households and about 1,200 residents. May’s students will do the same in two villages in Nicaragua with a total of 39 households.
Williams has kept track of participation from day one. The totals: four faculty members; 234 students, many who have made multiple trips; 59 community members and three people who have traveled as a student and as an alumnus.
The group’s projects are done over two years. Engineers scout a new location while finishing work on a targeted community. When a new location is found, measurements are taken, and a materials list is made. The water system itself, based on the specifications, is designed over the next fall, winter and spring.
Jessica Pierce participated in the second year of a project in Laos with Williams. Pierce, a grants coordinator at FLC, but in 2009 a graphics design major, last week recalled her visit to Ban Phakeo, a Laos village of 30 households with 170 people.
Villagers had to walk perhaps 20 minutes to dip water from a stream in buckets previously used for gasoline, oil or pesticides, Pierce said.
At a point above the village, a gravity-fed water line was installed to fill an 1,800-gallon storage tank, Pierce said. A communal tap and a latrine with a handwashing station were built on either side of the village.
“I didn’t know anything about water-system specifications because I’m not an engineer,” Pierce said. “But I mixed a lot of concrete.”
When not working directly on the project, Pierce, through an interpreter, instructed villagers about the connection between sanitation and health, a topic about which they were oblivious.
“The experience was life-changing,” Pierce said. “I was working with people who have a completely different reality than we do.”
The introduction to a foreign culture left Pierce with an itch to join another Engineers Without Borders trip.
Landon Wigton knows what she means.
Wigton, an FLC trained engineer who has worked for Advanced Mobile Propulsion Testing since graduating in 2011, is traveling with Williams this summer for his fourth trip. He has been to Laos twice and to Ecuador.
“I still stay in touch through social media with the interpreter on my first trip,” Wigton said. “Engineers Without Borders has impressed me about what giving can accomplish. I feel like a global citizen.”
One trip no more than ends than designing water systems for the next summer begins.
Fundraising is ongoing as well. An annual community outreach is the main source, supplemented by small donations. May estimated that donations of $1,000 or more make up about one-third of the budget.
The money May and Williams raise pays for materials and hardware, which is purchased on the local market once the team arrives on site. The components of a water system run about $15,000 to $18,000.
Students, who receive no academic credit for their work abroad, raise their own travel expenses, which is done collectively and individually. They don’t share the financial support received from the general public.
The personal payoff is immense, however, said Brian Campbell, who has traveled on five Engineers Without Borders projects during his student days and later as a mentor.
“These projects have changed my life and perspective of life in many ways,” Campbell said by email. “Many (foreign) communities don’t have the basics – water and sanitation. The difference it makes in their lives is huge.
“Mostly, I’ve been humbled,” Campbell said, “realizing the opportunity we have in this country that is not realized in the majority of the world.”
daler@durangoherald.com
