Students will spend approximately a week in Masaera, a remote village in the northern part of Tanzania near Mount Kilimanjaro that lacks running water or electricity.

Press Release

VALPARAISO, Ind. – Valparaiso University’s chapter of Engineers Without Borders will return to Africa in May and begin work on its second project on the continent – an initiative that will supply water to a Tanzanian village.

Students will spend approximately a week in Masaera, a remote village in the northern part of Tanzania near Mount Kilimanjaro that lacks running water or electricity.

Alex Williams, the president of EWB-VU, said students will work with community members to repair canals used for domestic water consumption and irrigation. The canals were built 75 years ago and have eroded so badly that for the past 20 years they have been causing problems both to the health of the community and to the surrounding land.

“As a highly multi-disciplinary organization with more experience than virtually every other undergraduate chapter in the country, we should be able to use the various talents of our members to assess the needs of the community effectively and come up with a well-rounded, sustainable solution,” said Williams, a junior civil engineering major from Fargo, N.D.

Chapter adviser Elizabeth Gingerich, associate professor of business law and editor of Valparaiso’s Journal of Values-Based Leadership, said the EWB-VU chapter is working with the Masaera Village Community Development Group on the project, which will last three to five years.
The first year, she said, will be dedicated to assessing the scope of the work that needs to be completed and to form relationships with the village inhabitants.
“It is so important to make this project a true partnership – not a dictatorship in which we tell the villagers what work we will do – in order to achieve vestment in the community and to leave having achieved the desired goal of a sustainable solution,” Gingerich said.

Laurin-Whitney Gottbrath, a junior television-radio communication major from Louisville who is public relations coordinator for the chapter, said that EWB-VU members will survey the canal and surrounding area, discuss the project with members of the village and conduct health surveys in order to track the impact of the project on the people of Masaera.

“We also will get the chance to learn more about the culture of this village by working with community members,” she said. During their week in Masaera, students will live and eat with families in the village.

In addition to repairing the village canals during future trips, the project calls for installing water harvest tanks to preserve water obtained during the rainy seasons for use in the dry season.

Among those traveling to Tanzania in May will be engineering professor Dr. Mike Hagenberger and several students who participated in the chapter’s trip to Kenya last year.

“As a result of their previous work in Kenya, those team members have acquired the skills necessary to deal with clean water initiatives,”
Gingerich said. “That knowledge will be very valuable in working with Masaera while at the same time we have an opportunity to increase the chapter’s familiarity with humanitarian engineering work even more.”

Gingerich noted that one of the most important aspects of EWB-VU’s work is that it brings students from a variety of backgrounds together.
“Humanitarian projects benefit greatly when they can draw on an interdisciplinary skill set, which is why we are happy to have students with mechanical engineering, civil engineering, business, communication, foreign language, geography, nursing, meteorology and other majors involved in the chapter,” she said.

EWB-VU is raising funds to support its upcoming trip to Tanzania and will hold its fifth annual silent auction Feb. 21 during the men’s basketball game at the Athletics-Recreations Center. The auction – featuring numerous items donated by area businesses – begins at 6:30 p.m. and continues through the game.

In 2008, Valparaiso’s chapter completed a five-year project that planned and constructed a drinking and irrigation water system for the village of Nakor in Kenya. Working with the people of the drought-stricken village, students installed windmill- and solar-powered water production systems and irrigated fields that now feed approximately 100 families. EWB-VU also installed a PlayPump – a merry-go-round water pump and storage system – near the village school that provides safe drinking water for children and teachers.

As a result of the project, the rate of waterborne illnesses in Nakor has dropped substantially and the problem of chronic malnourishment in the village has eased.

EWB-VU was the first university chapter to begin a project in Kenya and it was named a Friend of Kenya by the country’s ambassador last year.
Valparaiso’s chapter won the Engineers Without Borders-USA Educational Achievement Award in 2006 and members have presented information about its Nakor project at several conferences, including the World Education Colloquium in Rio de Janeiro.

Source: Valparaiso University