Engineers Without Borders International Experience Summary:
This was my second international trip with the Engineers Without Borders organization and I have been involved with the work of EWB since the beginning of my college career. When we traveled on the trip, I was the internal Vice President of the chapter and I was also one of the travel coordinators and health and safety officers for the trip. I was given a lot more responsibility on this trip and had more say in the implementation process because I had already been on an implementation trip. The trip was a week long implementation in Burere, Tanzania. Burere is a small community of about 3000 people off the shore of lake Victoria. Most of the members of the community are farmers or fishermen. In the past, our chapter had built a schoolhouse for the community but the goal for this project was to provide the schoolhouse with water. There was an existing well in the community, but not many people used it because it was in a remote location that flooded often. During the trip we installed pipelines, tanks, and tap stands so that the water could be pumped to the school on the top of the hill. Unfortunately, we ran into problems while we were there because the contractors arrived two days late and the wrong materials were ordered. Despite our best efforts to get the entire community involved and get the project back on track, there was just too much to do and we were not able to totally finish the project during the trip. When we realized that we were not going to finish the implementation, we started meeting more with the community members and explaining to them what still needed to be done. We told them that we would email them and keep in contact and that we needed them to send us pictures of the progress. Within a couple of days of our return home, we had a video from the community of water flowing to the schoolhouse.
This experience helped me to learn just how important teamwork is. We would not have been able to finish the project without the help of all of the community members. Everyone was willing to do their part because they knew this project would benefit everyone in the community. I am so glad that I was able to be part of this trip because, since it was my second implementation trip, I was able to participate more in the process. On my first trip I was given instructions and followed them the best I could, but on this trip I was able to lead an implementation team and had to make decisions about the project. This trip was a great opportunity for me to develop my leadership skills and to learn how to better communicate with people from other cultures.
This experience helped me to learn just how important teamwork is. We would not have been able to finish the project without the help of all of the community members. Everyone was willing to do their part because they knew this project would benefit everyone in the community. I am so glad that I was able to be part of this trip because, since it was my second implementation trip, I was able to participate more in the process. On my first trip I was given instructions and followed them the best I could, but on this trip I was able to lead an implementation team and had to make decisions about the project. This trip was a great opportunity for me to develop my leadership skills and to learn how to better communicate with people from other cultures.
Sample Work:
The following slideshow shows pictures off all of the work that we did in Burere, as well as a video we created to inspire more members of the organization to travel on implementation trips. I chose these as my sample work because they show many of the things we did each day while we were there. Some of the tasks that we completed while we were there included laying out pipes, connecting the pipes, building tap stands, brainstorming ways to fix problems, and working with contractors and community members. We were not able to fully complete the project while we were there so communication with the community was essential in order for us to diagnose problems remotely and help them to finish the installation.