VIDEO: Students Address a Small Town's Desperate Need for Clean Water
2019年6月28日
ODU's student chapter of Engineers Without Borders spent their spring break abroad to begin their most impactful project to date. The students traveled to Northern Guatemala to begin a three-year project to design a water distribution system for the town of La Reforma, a small community of roughly 800 residents.
基思·皮尔斯
While men who live in the small northern Guatemala town of La Reforma work in nearby factories, women and children spend most of their days carrying water from a containment tank to their homes. For some, this distance is more than a mile each way.
This prevents women from working outside the home and children - as young as 6 - from going to school regularly, adding to the community's cycle of poverty. 更糟糕的是, this shared and often recycled water is used for drinking, 洗澡, 给庄稼浇水，洗衣服, 构成严重的健康风险.
春假期间, while most students were relaxing at the beach or sleeping on grandma's couch, students from the 最靠谱的网赌软件 chapter of Engineers Without Borders (EWB) were in Guatemala helping the roughly 800 residents of the community in desperate need of clean water.
"The women of the community are the ones having to go up and down a hill, 每天三小时取水," said business and finance major Hans Gottschalk who serves as ODU EWB treasurer. “让我告诉你，这很难! 有一天我做了，我很疼. I can only imagine having to do it every single day."
Working in conjunction with Engineers Without Borders USA and Engineers Without Borders Hampton Roads professional chapter, the trip was designed to assess the feasibility of constructing a clean-water distribution system for this impoverished community.
"They currently have one elevated tank that they built on their own, and what we want to do is get a distribution system that takes the water from that elevated tank to each of the houses, with a filtration system to help keep the water clean," said engineering technology Professor Orlando Ayala. "EWB USA requires that the project be fully designed by students."
分成两组, the students had to determine if their skills matched the task that could last up to five years. A social team went door to door with a questionnaire to collect data, while an engineering team conducted water tests, surveyed land elevation and measured distances.
"This trip was my first real hands-on experience with an engineering project where, because there are a lot of unknown variables, we have a significant amount of control and freedom over the planning and its implementation,贾斯汀·马林说, a sophomore majoring in mechanical engineering.
"We conducted a lot of tests on the water and as we expected, there was a lot of bacteria and E.杆菌,丽塔·梅拉兹说, a junior majoring in electrical engineering and vice president ODU's EWB chapter. "Some people were drinking this water even though they knew it wasn't very clean, 但他们别无选择."
项目设计将耗时一年. The students will return to Guatemala in 2020 to begin implementing the plans, followed by three years of monitoring progress and maintenance.
资金 is a challenge for the students who must pay travel expenses as well as a share of materials and construction costs. A website has been set up for donations at: tinyurl.com/ODUEWB.
"You're helping students get great experience as they help a small community get something they've never had before,奥斯汀·米多尔说, a junior majoring in electrical engineering and ODU chapter president. "I think it's a fair donation considering you get to see real results of what your money is paying for."
