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Engineers without Borders - Impact in the Community

On the page: Engineers without Borders

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Researchers have identified different levels of community member participation, such as passive participation, initiative and leadership, and decision making in projects across the globe. In order to have a true impact, students, professionals, and communities are given clearly identified roles for their participation in the project. The students' role is to be open and willing to learn from the problems at hand and the methodologies used in the projects. Professional engineers are expected to fill the role of technical experts in the used methods and to communicate with students and community members. The communities are given the role of communicating with the assisting engineers and are actively encouraged to take participatory and leadership roles in the decision making of the project methodology. Education is a major part of Engineers without Borders and all participants are expected to learn from one another. There are three levels of participation with Engineers without Borders: low (monetary contribution), middle (manual labor), and high (decision making and leadership positions), and all are considered to be important for the projects to be successful.

Most Engineers Without Borders projects focus on water and deal with sanitation,  distribution, and management. One example of a completed water project is the River Basin Management project in Palestine. River management can be very important in situations where the river provides the only source of drinking water. Projects of this nature can be extremely difficult, as the presence of biological barriers can prevent workers from making major environmental changes, which can in turn make it difficult to quantify the effectiveness of Engineers without Borders projects.

Engineers without Borders - Educators

As educators in the Engineering field, teachers play a large role in the projects by Engineers without Borders.  Some studies focus on types of study abroad programs that currently exist, challenges that are found in these programs, and the best practices that have been found in the study abroad programs.  One class of students in design, engineering, and Technology was taught to nine science education graduate students who were also preparing to be teachers. Compared to other professions, engineers is dominated by males with only 11% of the workforce being female.  Service learning can be beneficial for students, communities, and faculty.  When Service Learning projects are credit-bearing in the Engineering curricula, there is higher participation and more of an impact on the communities.  Another example of this kind of teaching is using Post-Disaster Scenarios in the classroom as a teaching tool. 43 students were asked questions about this curriculum and how students responded to disaster related classes and activities.  They were also asked about the best and worst elements of the sessions.  The options for this question were Survival Theme, video, group work, and hands on. Although, generally students were frustrated with the group work and hands on work, most students were satisfied with the Survival Theme in their curriculum.   One format of engineering education used in Engineers without Borders is Service learning.  The schools that have exemplary programs of this type are: Brigham Young, University of Dayton, and Duke Engineering.  The studies show that it is often difficult to find faculty who are interesting in participating in the projects.  Based on the surveys and conversations, it was found that integrated engineering programs in colleges are important to help participation grow throughout the world.  Colleges and universities often struggle with being proactive in recruiting students who have leadership with long term commitment, take an integrated approach, reward faculty who participate, take advantage of resources, involve several faculty members, and prepare students.  On the other side of spectrum, some teachers reported that in 2008 a student group of Engineers without Borders won an award of $25,000 to use plastic water sachets to make shoes for people in Haiti.  This experiment backfired and created waste littering the streets and beaches in Haiti. Many of the evidence for the argument in this article comes from specific cases where interference in other countries had a negative impact on the local community.  Most of the academic literature suggests that there are examples of good and bad outcomes that come from Engineering without Borders projects and teachers are excited to express their opinions and views of these projects.  

Engineers without Borders - Students

Engineering students go to school to be trained to make intelligent decisions and be able to interact with people at the national and international levels.  Engineers Without Borders has created a way to train engineering students in technical and nontechnical skills. One examples of this model of teaching is an Engineering in Developing Countries (EDC) program at the University of Colorado at Boulder which was tested with a group of students.  The program had both engineering and non-engineering disciplines and addressed a wide range of issues in the world such as water provisioning, food production, health, and shelter. Academic literature claims that engineering professions should focus on creating a sustainable world for everyone in the world around them. There is an increasing rate of cases where students create prototypes by using natural and plentiful resources including wood, mud, and the land itself.  Wood Science is extremely important in today’s society, which is accredited in the scientific world. A pilot program called "Wood Scientists Without Borders" was established and it's aim is to encourage more engineering students to participate in wood science. The advantages of Mud Brick Constructions consist of Cost Savings, Thermal Mass, Eco friendliness, self satisfaction, and aesthetics.   Mud bricks have become a process and method for Engineering students to help build and rebuild communities that have been destroyed by natural or manmade disasters. In 2009 it was found that using mud bricks to rebuild houses that were destroyed in ways such as ecological degradation, natural disasters, or political turmoil, was a cheap and efficient way to rebuild infrastructure.  Today 30% of the world’s present population live in earthen structures. Director of Engineering Service Corps of the USA - Engineers Without Borders, El-Omari presented a re-construction project to the United Nations where Engineers Without Borders would use the area behind the living areas of refugees to dig wells and bring water to the Ein Sultan Refugee camp. Engineers without borders prides itself in bridging the gap between the learning environment in schools and the “real” world problems that are found in communities across the world.