As June rolls around and summer is in full swing, EWB-Pitt would like to thank all of its generous donors one final time. Our travel team has just returned from a very successful assessment trip to Carijana, Bolivia, where they spent two weeks in the Andes mountains. During this time, the team members were able to develop a personal connection with the community members by talking with them and joining in their soccer matches. The team also was able to properly survey and assess the needs present in the community through public health data collection techniques and collecting relevant technical engineering data. This trip, in its entirety, was incredibly successful; all of its success would not have been possible if not for the generosity of all of our donors.

We sincerely thank each and every one for allowing us to help this community. We are incredibly excited to be partnered with this community and to continue into the next phase of the project, which is the alternative analysis phase. During this time, we will develop various solution designs based on the data collected during this summer’s assessment trip. Thank you again for making this trip possible and we hope that you remain interested in the progress of this project!

Our EngagePitt campaign has concluded with us reaching 143% of our goal. In total, we raised $7,327 and the excess funds will definitely be useful in beginning prototyping and implementation after our trip! We could not be more thrilled about the success of this campaign, and would like to extend our thanks to each one of our donors for supporting us. 

Over the past semester, our travel team has worked hard to prepare for this assessment trip. With the assessment trip being less than three weeks away, our team is excited and looking forward to travelling to the Carijana community!

For future updates and more information about our chapter, check out our website at: https://pittewb.wordpress.com. Thank you!

We are so thankful to everyone who enabled us to hit our goal, and our campaign is coming to an end with one day left! Our school year is now coming to an end as well, and with that, so are our travel preparation meetings. The chapter has spent the past semester learning how to do water and soil tests, make maps, carry out surveys, and lead focus groups and public forums. They have also spent much of their time learning about Bolivian culture as well as learning about ways to work with cultures different than our own. This first visit to Carijana will be an important first step to earn the community’s trust, as well as to gain a better understanding of the biggest issues that this community is facing. The travel team and our chapter are excited for this next step and learning how we can find long term solutions to the issues the community faces. Thank you so much to everyone who has donated to this project. Each donation is helping our group to improve the lives of the hundreds of people of Carijana. We will continue to update our donors even after the trip and if you are interested in learning more about our chapter and trips you can visit our website at https://pittewb.wordpress.com .

We have 3 days left of our campaign, and we are so grateful for all of those who have donated to make our project possible. We are 7% over the goal, and the team is getting really excited for the trip this May. We ask you all to continue to share our project with people over these last three days so we can see how much we can raise in the final hours of the campaign. The chapter is working hard to prepare for the trip and on Sunday the travel team will be trained on mapping and using the GPS to map out different points. We also were able to get some pictures of Carijana this week which we have shared below. Thanks again to everyone who has supported us so far – let’s see how much we can raise before the end of the campaign!

With only a month left before the trip to Carijana, we have met our goal of $5,000! Thank you to all our gracious donors who made this achievement possible. That said, we want to continue raising money to surpass our goal with flying colors in order to ensure that we have enough money for any unexpected costs we may incur during the trip itself and help us cover additional fees upon returning home. Let’s see what we can raise in this upcoming and final week of our campaign!

In the month we have remaining before travel, our members will be finalizing documents to bring on the trip including skeleton data sheets, walking surveys, household surveys, as well as materials to reference when doing various activities and tests. We have been working diligently on these documents all semester, with some even being started in the fall, and are excited to see the hard work coming to fruition. Once again, without the immense support from our donors our trip this May and the partnership with the community of Carijana would not be possible. Thank you for all that have done and for becoming part of our team!

Fun Fact: At 19,000 square kilometers, Bolivia’s Madidi National Park is one of the largest protected areas in the world. It is home to over 8,000 different species (and counting)!

“Why did you join Engineers Without Borders?” This was the question that Makenzie White and Mallory Hudson, our training coordinators, posed to us at our weekly travel team training meeting. We all thought to ourselves for a moment, and then immediately started drawing our response on the blank paper in front of us. After sharing our responses, we realized that we all joined EWB for a slightly different reason. However, we are all united by a common goal, and we are all part of one team. We wanted to thank you, our donors, for joining our team and helping us to reach our goal. We could not do any of this without you.

This activity we did in our training meeting is called visual voices, and we were practicing to facilitate a similar activity at Carijana’s school during the assessment trip. Visual voices is intended to engage with the youth of the community and understand their perspective. We will be asking the students an open ended question such as “What is special about your community?” Then, the students will use various art supplies to draw their responses. We seek to understand what the students draw and gain some insight into their thoughts about their own community because the youth are the future of the community.

As we come to the end of our school year, we are practicing the final data collection techniques such as visual voices and wrapping up any loose ends. We have frequent conference calls with our NGO in Bolivia to finalize the logistics of the trip, and it is all really coming together. Thanks again to everyone who has supported us and aided us in our work! Thanks for being part of the team.

Fun Fact: When Bolivia was under Spanish rule it was known as Upper Peru.

We are 93% of the way toward our goal, and we are halfway through our campaign! We cannot thank our donors enough. Without these donations our trip would not be possible. Everyone within our chapter has been working hard to prepare for the trip, but we know it wouldn’t be possible without our dedicated executive board. They have each put tireless hours and hard work into this organization, and we are so grateful for their fearless leadership and guidance. Our executive board includes Nikita Patel (President), Anna Lloyd (Vice President), Quinn Marcus (Secretary), MJ Patterson (Business Manager), Angela Rees (Events Chair), Samil Paul (Public Relations Chair), Michael Gresh-Sill (Grants Lead), Evan Marohn (Local Projects Lead), Amanda Zelnis & Eli Smith (International Technical Leads), and Trinity Sprague and Joe Harris (International Public Health Leads). We appreciate everything they have done for this organization and recognize we wouldn’t be where we are today if it weren’t for them and all the strong leaders that came before them.

With our campaign halfway through we are ecstatic with how close we are to our goal and are hopeful that we will not only reach the goal, but exceed it. All additional funds raised will go to general operating costs and to help cover any additional travel expenses that occur during or after the trip. Your support is truly appreciated as we are so close to meeting our goal! Let’s see if we can do it, and hopefully even surpass our goal!

Fun Fact: Bolivia is home to the largest salt flats in the world.

We would like to thank everyone who has donated to our cause so far. We are currently 79% of the way to our goal and we could not be any more thankful to our donors! Thank you!!

On Saturday March 30th, the travel team went on a camping retreat to prepare for the upcoming trip to Carijana. Team members spent time practicing and preparing for several aspects of the trip. A lot of time was spent practicing conducting the water tests. The team was able to practice the water tests on a local stream found near the campground. The team also worked on reviewing the schedule for the time in the community as well training on how latrines are constructed. In addition, members spent a lot of time doing team-bonding activities and just getting to know each other better. On Sunday the activities director lead the team in some team building exercises and some of their outside adventure course. In one activity, the team was instructed to build a cube of maximum possible size with an array of pipes and connectors given by the instructor. The team also worked together to get everyone over a 10 foot wall. While the team had lots of fun, there was also a lot learned, from how to collect and test water samples, to latrine construction, and learning more about how everyone works together as a team. With less than 7 weeks until travel our chapter is getting really excited in preparing to work with the people of Carijana this summer.

Fun Fact: People dressed as zebras wander the streets of one of Bolivia’s capital cities, La Paz, helping children cross the road safely and educating drivers and pedestrians about road safety.

No attempt to better a community can be fulfilled without the input of the community itself. It is important to make sure that the community members can make suggestions and adjustments, so that the project can live on after our Engineers Without Borders team is no longer there. For this reason, our chapter has students who focus on the public health aspect of our project. These students are planning to conduct a public forum, several household surveys, a few focus groups, some meetings with the community leaders, a SWOT analysis with community members, and a visual voices exercise. The public forum will be used to gage an understanding of the community’s feelings on topics as a whole, while the focus groups will help us understand what individual groups within the community feel about certain problems that may arise. The visual voices exercise will comprise of kids from the community making a picture, using crayons and markers, of what their first thought is when considering questions about their community’s strengths and health. With a mix of all of these different types of activities it is our hope to get a better understanding of the problems that the community currently faces, and their thoughts on possible solutions so that this project can be a successful partnership.

Fun Fact: The clock on the National Congress Building in La Paz runs backwards to remind people to think differently!

The Pitt chapter of Engineers Without Borders is currently 58% of the way toward our goal of $5000, and we cannot be more grateful to all our donors! Meanwhile the travel team continues to prepare to visit Carijana, Bolivia. On Sunday March 24th, they prepared by carrying out a practice of various geological tests that are necessary for the construction of latrines on Flagstaff Hill in Pittsburgh. Members of the Pitt EWB chapter are also compiling lists of their materials needed for the project and are in the process of composing travel itineraries.

In addition, members of the club are developing emergency procedures for the trip by working with an emergency organization called ISOS. These plans will help group members know what to do in the event of an emergency and let emergency services know where to find the team in case of an emergency. Next weekend, travel team members will go on a camping retreat to better prepare for their trip, as well as to partake in some team bonding. On that camping trip, they will learn how to carry out various water tests, in order to determine if water is safe to drink. They will also study various latrine reports which will help them to make a decision about which type of latrine to build. The idea of the camping trip is to help members of the travel team gain hands on experience in the outside world.

Again, thanks to all our donors, we ask you to continue to help us share our campaign so we can exceed our goal!