Driven by the idea that entry to clean water and dependable infrastructure can remodel lives, Engineers Without Borders USA tackles complicated challenges in communities around the globe.
In locations incessantly torn by financial strife and societal battle, the worldwide group steadfastly pursues its mission to enhance dwelling situations and create alternatives for folks to thrive.
Through these efforts, a rising variety of Arizona State University college students are getting hands-on training within the technological, logistical, organizational and administration expertise wanted to satisfy such challenges.
Among them are 22 members of the group’s ASU student chapter who’re serving to the East African nation of Kenya present clean water to the agricultural village of Naki by designing, testing and implementing a water filtration system, funded partly by donation from ASU’s Change the World initiative and an ASU Global Education Office Go Global grant awarded to the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering.
Over the previous a number of semesters, successive teams of ASU college students have contributed to the undertaking in Kenya, a nation of greater than 50 million folks, every constructing on the work of the final. Last yr, the ASU workforce helped restore a 20,000-gallon water tank, however after discovering the water unsanitary, they developed a water filter utilizing simply accessible supplies like sand.
The workforce’s plans embody implementing solar-powered effectively and rainwater catchment techniques over the subsequent two years to offer filtered water to as many as 2,000 folks throughout three communities. A future effectively undertaking will deliver year-round entry to clean water for greater than 3,000 members of 1 group.
Eden Funk, a Fulton Schools mechanical engineering pupil in her senior yr and co-vice president of the Engineers Without Borders ASU pupil chapter, is the workforce lead for the endeavor. She says lots of the college students concerned are within the civil and mechanical engineering or pc science packages, whereas others come from quite a lot of different ASU diploma packages past engineering, together with physics.
Mounia Bazzi, a Fulton Schools electrical engineering undergraduate pupil, says the chapter expects to see extra contributions from dozens of ASU college students, college members and trade professionals in each present and future endeavors in Kenya.
Guidance from skilled mentors
About a dozen college students are at present concerned within the undertaking, with extra anticipated to join earlier than its deliberate completion in Kenya subsequent yr, Bazzi says. She believes the subsequent section — creating photo voltaic power techniques and battery storage — will make an enduring distinction for the group.
The batteries are a part of the photo voltaic power system for the water pump undertaking. Additional elements of the undertaking the scholars plan to design and construct embody a bore gap and a rain catchment system.
Funk says the student-led workforce is getting invaluable steerage from Jared Shoepf, a Fulton Schools affiliate educating professor of engineering and director of ASU’s Engineering Projects in Community Service, the umbrella program by means of which the Engineers Without Borders Kenya workforce is working.
“He meets with us regularly to review designs, advise us in getting through project setbacks, and connect us with industry experts who expand our technical knowledge,” Funk says. “Having this steady mentorship has been essential in transforming our ideas into viable engineering solutions.”
The members of the ASU Engineers Without Borders chapter at present concerned are among the many 100-plus college students engaged on related initiatives in eight international locations and plenty of communities worldwide.
Since 2012, about 20 college students every semester have contributed to the Kenya undertaking, serving to principally with analysis prototyping of applied sciences and associated techniques. Teams have traveled to Kenya eight occasions in teams of about six or seven college students.
Projects reveal elementary function of engineering
Engineer Jack Moody, a water sources providers chief with Westwood Professional Services in Phoenix, and Jason Reynolds, a undertaking engineer with Jett Civil Engineering primarily based in Scottsdale, Arizona, function mentors for the ASU Engineers Without Borders chapter and have been guiding the scholars on their work for the Kenya undertaking.
“During our recent trip to Kenya this summer, it was made apparent just how much the students actually care about the community that we are providing with water infrastructure,” Reynolds says. “A few of the students made a point to start learning how to speak Swahili and were constantly chatting with the locals. I believe they really appreciated having conversations in their native tongue, and it helped to reinforce the point that these students genuinely care about these people and their communities.”
Moody factors to the scholars’ exemplary work in serving to assemble a 70,000-liter, in-ground storage tank to gather water from rooftop runoff assortment techniques, repairing two earthen dams, and constructing a hydraulics laboratory on the Jaramogi Oginga Odinga University of Science and Technology in Kenya.
“I enjoy working with countries that need help with water resources and other types of basic necessities, but I also just as much enjoy mentoring and working with these ASU students,” Moody says.
Funk says she has gained a perspective shared by different college students concerned within the undertaking.
“Before my first trip to Kenya, the problems I worked on in my classes felt like abstract equations and drawings on a page,” she says. “Standing in a rural community and watching those calculations materialize into a functioning system that improved clean water access for thousands of people reframed everything I thought I knew. It revealed the true purpose behind engineering, demonstrating that every formula and every design has the power to improve lives.”
Community members in Kenya echo that sentiment, expressing appreciation for the scholars’ position in strengthening native infrastructure and entry to important sources.
“The collaboration between ASU’s Engineers Without Borders chapter and local communities in Kenya has demonstrated the profound impact of student-led engineering initiatives on global development,” says Noah Okidia, a group volunteer companion in Kenya. “As a volunteer working with the ASU team, I have witnessed firsthand how technical expertise, coupled with cultural exchange and community engagement, can generate lasting solutions. Despite our vastly different cultures, the ASU Engineers Without Borders team has always fit into our communities and carried out their planned projects.”
Funk and Bazzi say these pursuits not solely increase college students’ engineering data and problem-solving expertise, but in addition give invaluable expertise in working with folks from different cultures.