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| Home : Volume 31 : Winter 2005 : | |
| Engineers without borders program: Improving Rwanda's water system | |
Engineers Without Borders participant Evan Parks (upper right) meets with Rwandan children during the summer of 2004. |
Civil and Environmental Engineering student Evan Parks went to Rwanda last summer thinking he would help install a reliable water system. The trip ended up changing his life.
Parks, a senior majoring in geological engineering, went to the strife-ridden African country as part of UW-Madison's Engineers Without Borders (EWB) program. The EWB program, populated largely by engineering students, seeks to create sustainable engineering projects in impoverished areas both in the United States and abroad.
Parks got involved with the UW-Madison EWB chapter last year, and took interest in its Rwandan projects. The country has been torn apart by a civil war, and is one of the poorest of African countries. According to Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Peter Bosscher, who advises the campus EWB chapter, Rwanda has little working infrastructure, and basic necessities like clean water and sewage systems are lacking in much of the country.
Because the country is so poor, communities have to rely on rudimentary water systems. Villagers are often forced to walk several miles to obtain water if their local system breaks down, and often that water is untreated, Parks says.
The UW-Madison EWB chapter focused its efforts on the Muramba Deanery, an area of about 300,000 people served by four churches of the Muramba Parish. Muramba is one of the poorest areas of Rwanda, according to Bosscher, and has received little government assistance in building up its basic infrastructure system.
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Nine members of the UW-Madison EWB chapter, along with Bosscher, traveled to Muramba in June to work on local projects for two weeks. The group of students worked on improving a gravity-fed water system that supplies much of the water for Muramba. Because of the country's extremely mountainous terrain, it's difficult to build centralized water systems, Parks says. So drinking water has to be found and delivered locally.
"It's a difficult work environment," he says. "They don't have basic infrastructure like we think of it. We like to compartmentalize as engineers. In Rwanda, it's all the same problem."
Clean water for drinking and cooking is a scarce resource in Rwanda, as many parts of the country lack proper water systems. |
In addition to working on the gravity-fed water system, the group of students have worked with Muramba residents to encourage them to develop practical skills, such as welding and pipe-fitting, that will help sustain the water system and other improvements. Bosscher says one of the key goals of the EWB program is to develop sustainable projects — ones that the residents of Muramba can sustain on their own after the engineering students have left.
For Parks, the work on the water system project inspired him to go back this coming summer. There's more work to be done, he says — establishing medical clinics, securing the health of children, and building better schools for a citizenry in which formal education beyond the fourth grade is rare. "Rwanda is both beautiful and terrible," he says. "It has terrible, gripping poverty and a legacy of war and genocide. People survive in terrible conditions."
Yet Parks says he was at times overwhelmed by the welcome reception accorded the EWB students from the Muramban residents. They embraced the work of the students, dedicated themselves to building on the group's projects, and urged them to come back. Parks said he can't wait.
"In my opinion, the most important thing we did was build a relationship with this community," he says. "We built a foundation."
Content by perspective@engr.wisc.edu
Date last modified: Tuesday, 26-Apr-2005 17:06:42 CDT
Date created: 26-Apr-2005
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