Ten Rowan University students will begin their new year by participating in Engineers Without Borders projects in El Salvador and The Gambia.
Two juniors ? Sarah Gettings of Runnemede and Gemma Peebles of East Windsor ? will play integral roles in these programs. Gettings is the project lead for El Salvador, and Peebles is the EWB?s web master and clinic team lead for The Gambia.
Gettings said the Rowan EWB chapter has been working with the community of La Ceiba, El Salvador since 2007.
?The river and wells in the community are all contaminated with unhealthy levels of coliform,? said Gettings. ?This contamination causes high incidence of diarrhea and parasites among community members, resulting in the death of many children. Three assessment trips were made by the chapter from 2007 to 2010, during which many different solutions were examined and talked about with the community. The final solution, which was affordable for both the chapter and the community, sustainable and practical overall, was to install biosand filters in each of the 150 homes of La Ceiba.?
Gettings said, since this decision was reached, the Rowan chapter of EWB has taken two trips to the area ? in January and June 2011. Ten biosand filters were constructed and installed on each trip and the filter recipients were taught how to use and maintain their filters and encouraged to participate in the construction process. On the June trip, monitoring activities like water quality testing and health and filter surveys of the filter recipients were also completed.
?So far, the filters have been successful in removing contamination from the water,? said Gettings. ?A team of Rowan students and a professional mentor will be traveling this January to install 15 more filters and continue to monitor filters that have already been installed.?
As the project lead, Gettings said a lot of her responsibilities were in preparing for the trip.
?I was making sure all of the reports required by EWB were completed, picking the travel team, getting everyone?s paperwork together, making sure the community knew we were coming, making sure supplies were ordered, getting plane tickets and travel insurance, packing our cases with water quality testing supplies and anything else we would need, making our schedule, assigning responsibilities to each team member and organizing and holding meetings with the travel team,? said Gettings. ?I had a lot of help from one of the travel team members, Kelly Barb, who is also on the clinic team with me.?
Gettings said while the team is in El Salvador, she will make sure they stay on schedule with the work that needs to be done each day and adjust the schedule when needed.
?I will hold meetings each night where the team will get together and discuss what was accomplished that day and goals for the next day, and I will help resolve any issues that arise,? she said. ?Along with that, I will be doing manual labor with the rest of my team and some community members, sieving and washing sand and gravel for the filters. I will lead a small group of three or four team members when we are ready to install the filters, and I will also be doing some water quality testing for monitoring.?
Peebles said the original reason the Rowan EWB team went to The Gambia was to repair a flooding road.
?Another organization actually completed that project, so we started looking at the pumps in the villages,? said Peebles. ?Our project at that point was to find sustainable ways to help the villagers access clean drinking water. Another project was added to that when the issue of deforestation came up ? peanut-shell briquettes which could be added to fires as a supplement for wood during cooking. We?ll be collecting data from the villages on our main project ? water pump repair and maintenance ? as well as monitoring our original project ? the Kudang-Kuntaur Road. We also hope to test our peanut shell briquettes.?
Part of Peebles? leadership role was to get The Gambia trip approved, with which she had obvious success.
?From this point on, it will be to finalize trip details and make sure we get the proper data out of this trip,? said Peebles. ?When we?re actually in-country, I will be collecting data on our peanut shell project. As web master, I update the website and as clinic lead, I make sure all the paperwork gets done on time and handed in. Everyday duties include editing reports, reading sections from other team members for accuracy and pounding out trip details. I prepared by reading documents from the project leads in past years to find out exactly what had been tried already or what still needed to be done.?
Peebles, who will be in The Gambia with her team from Jan. 2 to 13, said she expects ?a thorough and complete end-product from all aspects of the projects.? Though she said the projects are very time-consuming and sometimes difficult as far as communication is concerned, she would like to continue to work on the project in years to come. Peebles? ultimate goal is to be a civil engineer in the United States Air Force.
?I?m in the ROTC program and will commission after my senior year,? said Peebles. ?The Air Force does many humanitarian missions around the world and, as a civil engineer, I could be a part of that. Through Engineers Without Borders, I can get some experience with travel and the cultures of other countries. I will also be more aware of the problems they have around the world and be better prepared to combat them.?
Peebles said she?s both nervous and excited about the project. She has never been out of the country before, let alone planned a trip to Africa. But she thinks it will be a great ?eye-opening experience.?
Gettings, who already traveled to El Salvador once last June, said she now knows what to expect on her trip, so she?s mostly excited.
?It is very different than America,? she said. ?Since it was my first time out of the country, I think the biggest shock to me was that I couldn?t understand anything. I knew no one would be speaking English, but I had never experienced anything like that before. It was weird to not be able to communicate at all with anyone except the small group of people that I went with. It was very obvious just from our three hour drive from the airport to La Ceiba that it was a poor area. It was even more obvious once we were in La Ceiba. And it made me realize, even more than I already knew, all of the things we take for granted.?
Gettings said she expects the project will continue its success and looks forward to seeing more and more community involvement so that, eventually, the people of La Ceiba will be able to make the biosand filters without the team?s help.
?These projects are important because they are changing people?s lives,? she said. ?It?s hard, probably impossible, to imagine what it?s like to live in a place where you know drinking the water will probably make you sick, probably make your children sick. They didn?t do anything to deserve that. If I have the ability to help, why would I not??
Though she?s not yet sure what her ultimate career goal would be, Gettings said she knows she wants to continue to work with EWB.
?You learn a lot when you work on these projects, not just about the methods of coming up with solutions and technical design, but about what to do when things don?t go as planned, about thinking and problem solving in the field, and about people, culture and cultural differences,? she said. ?These things all help make me a more well-rounded engineering student, which is helpful no matter what field I go into. And I would encourage others to get involved because it?s a good opportunity to help people and to learn a lot. The more people that are involved and helping, the more people we can help.?
Source: http://c.moreover.com/click/here.pl?r5663968636
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