| Engineers Without Borders plans next overseas project |
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| Written by Nathan Wilke | |
 UMR students on this design team face a far different challenge than many others. They are tasked with creating and instaling water purification systems for third world countries. As part of the program, many of them traveled to Bolivia this summer.  This summer’s trip marks the 5th overseas venture group members have taken since UMR’s chapter was founded in 2004. In early August, three UMR students traveled to Rio Colorado, Bolivia to evaluate the water treatment system of a local school. The existing system has a capacity of 7,000 liters; just enough for cooking and drinking water supplies.EWB will work this semester on system redesign to increase the system’s capacity to 45,000 liters to support the addition of showering and other facilities. Services such as reliable drinking water sources are often taken for granted in the United States are often luxuries that people overseas live without. Tom Shipley, manager of video productions for UMR, who traveled with EWB to capture the trip on film, tells of the living conditions around the project site. “In the western hemisphere, only Haiti is poorer and has a higher infant mortality rate”, said Shipley. The travelers had to cope with incredible heat and humidity, swarms of bugs, and hard labor. “Watching our students asses the situation and begin formulating a plan of action to come up with solutions was a very real demonstration of the caliber of young people that make up UMR’s student body”, Shipley said of the student’s efforts during this past trip.  Now, the UMR team faces the challenges of designing upgrades for the system, as well as planning another trip next semester to put their plans into action by implementing the upgrades in Bolivia. David Longrie, the outgoing president of EWB, explained how the problem would be approached over the coming winter.The work includes revamping of the system from the ground up, including working with a Bolivian company to drill an entirely new well. Fundraising is also a key to the success of the project. Support from companies and university departments will provide money to bring planned improvements into reality at the Rio Colorado school. “The entire project will be divided into three or four teams,” Longrie said of the design process.” “They will then design their part of the project then we will put it all together.” The target dates for the implementation trip in Bolivia will be around the end of the spring semester. EWB attempts to plan trips not to interfere with school, and so members can still take summer jobs, which places the trip around the week after finals in May. Video from the August trip can be seen on the UMR Video Productions website at http://video.umr.edu/. The video page is also linked to the main campus gateway homepage. |
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