Engineers Without Borders 2024 International Projects

Who We Are

Engineers Without Borders USA is a non-profit international service organization that aims to build a better world by empowering communities to meet their basic human needs and providing them with the skills to solve their future demands. The University of Pittsburgh Student Chapter (EWB Pitt) is composed of undergraduate and graduate students of both engineering and non-engineering backgrounds, which enables the organization to ensure that the projects address the needs of each community. Currently, EWB Pitt is working on two international projects: a sanitation project in Carijana, Bolivia, and a water distribution project in Tambanal-Ayaloma, Ecuador. We are excited to announce that a travel team will be sent down to each community this summer!

Bolivia 

EWB Pitt partnered with the community of Carijana, Bolivia in the fall of 2018. The community is located 9 hours from one of Bolivia’s capitals, La Paz. Specifically, the community is 20 miles east of the border of Peru and 50 miles north of Lake Titicaca. Carijana consists of more than 50 households and is growing. The main languages spoken in the community are Quechua and Spanish, and the community’s economy and workforce focus largely on cash crops and subsistence agriculture. EWB Pitt is working alongside the community and our partnered non-governmental organization, Engineers in Action (EIA), on a sanitation project with a focus on the construction of latrines and updated sanitation education.

Carijana initially requested 50 personal latrines, one per household. After an assessment trip to the community and many discussions with the people of Carijana, we agreed on a custom latrine to meet all of the individual’s needs. In October 2020 and September 2021, our team coordinated two remote implementations totaling 20 latrines. Then, in August 2022 and 2023, we traveled and implemented an additional 15 latrines each year, finally completing all 50 latrines.

During the implementation of these 50 latrines, our team determined an additional 5 latrines were needed to meet the community’s needs. This summer, our team will remotely implement these last 5 latrines, and our travel team will also conduct a post-assessment and monitoring trip to evaluate the constructed latrines and their impact on the community’s public health.

Ecuador

The communities of Tambanal and Ayaloma, located in the south-center of the Ecuadorian Andes, are made up of 50 families who lack consistent access to clean water. Most community members walk up steep slopes with containers to collect water from small mountain sources or collect rainwater in buckets from their roofs. These sources provide little water in the dry season, and their existing storage system has fallen into disrepair. Most community members do not participate in water treatment, which leads to a number of preventable water-borne diseases and reduced quality of life. These illnesses have a particular impact on infant and child mortality.

In the fall of 2021, EWB Pitt partnered with the communities of Tambanal and Ayaloma and an NGO in Ecuador called Proyecto Dulcepamba. In 2022, our team paired with the Pittsburgh Professional Chapter of EWB (PPC), who are now co-leading the project.

EWB Pitt and the PPC are working with the community to provide clean, consistent water access to each household. Last year, students traveled to the community to gather health data and GPS to aid in the design process. Currently, students are finalizing the design of the system and getting the required approvals necessary for implementation. This summer, our travel team will conduct an implementation trip to the community to begin the implementation phase of the project and continue to build our relationship with the community members.

Where Your Donation Will Go 

Your donation will enable EWB Pitt’s travel teams to travel to our partnered communities and conduct each project. For the Bolivia project, this includes food for travel team members, in-country travel, labor fees, travel mentors, a translator, and our in-country NGOs project engineer to collect all of the construction materials and equipment to be transported to the community. Since the community of Carijana is so remote, the project engineer stays in the community for a few days and returns once every few weeks to monitor the construction process. The NGO also hires two masons to help with professional brickwork to ensure the safety of our structures. Your donations will also fund our pre-assessment trip to another community during the travel trip to Carijana. For the Ecuador project, the donation would go towards food for travel team members, in-country travel, and labor fees. Since this project is co-led with the PPC, your donation would go towards student costs, which are vital to student participation and benefit from this project.

If you wish to find out more about our projects in Carijana and Tambanal, or just more in general about the organization, come visit our website: www.pittewb.org.

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Contributions received for this project shall be used in accordance with the purpose described herein, the terms in the FAQs and applicable law. For questions that cannot be answered in the FAQs, please call 412-648-4658 or email engage@pitt.edu.