A group of UW students involved with the Engineers Without Borders (EWB) program returned from a trip to Guatemala earlier this month.
The group traveled to the small town of La Comunidad Maya to assess the water supply systems there, and to offer what upgrades they found to be necessary.
“We focus on the technical gaps in communities’ needs,” said Callie Berman, one of the group leaders on the Guatemala trip. “Water delivery and storage projects are some of the things we do. We focus on the technical side of things.”
The group discovered that certain parts of the village were only receiving water at night. They also discovered a number of holes in the delivery system pipes and a general state of disrepair in the village’s drinking water system.
Despite the problems the EWB members diagnosed, they discovered modern water filtration systems in a number of homes.
This product, called EcoFiltro, was donated to the community by a non-profit NGO. The organization had a satellite office in a city near the community with a home base in another large city in Guatemala. However, the satellite office recently shut down, preventing people in the community from receiving more filtration systems or parts for repairs.
“The reality is that sometimes these organizations just don’t have the staff or the resources to keep these satellite offices open,” Berman said.
Problems such as these are what EWB attempts avoid in their endeavors abroad.
“We’ll establish a program in a community, and then within that program we can do multiple projects,” Berman said. “The minimum commitment is five years, and after the every project is implemented and finished, we commit to a year of monitoring to make sure we’ve set up something sustainable.”
Berman said the cause of the difficulty certain countries face with infrastructure failings are organizations that provide a community with products that do not truly foster developmental independence.
“Another key piece of EWB is having an in country party,” Berman said.
The group recruited the help of engineering students from the Universidad Via de Guatemala to help with the project operations.
“Sometimes our in-country partner will end up being a non-profit group, and they tend to be less committed,” Berman said. “So we were really lucky to have such a stable and dedicated partner who can continue helping the community once we’ve left.”
Berman urged anyone interested in joining EWB to attend weekly meetings, held on Tuesdays at 6:30 in the Engineering Building room 3076. Anyone with questions concerning joining the organization can contact Berman via email at cberman@uwyo.edu
The UW chapter of EWB is also hosting a banquet on Feb. 22 at 1000 E. University Avenue.
