Recently in Engineers Without Borders Category

Since today is Blog Action Day 2008 and this year's theme is poverty, we thought it would be a good time to remind readers about how Missouri S&T students and researchers are doing their part to improve living conditions around the globe. From students traveling abroad to build latrines, design sewer systems and rebuild hurricane-stricken areas to researchers developing alternative energy sources to alumni developing innovative and inexpensive ways to thresh grain in impoverished areas, Missouri S&T's people are helping to make the world a better place.

We have all the forms for the building finished and almost all are poured. As we have been pulling off all of the forms we can see all the good construction work that Dan Kienitz and Paul Hamilton have been doing. We are going to weld all the joists this afternoon as soon as we can get a stick welder. This should round us up for the rest of today (Saturday). Then on Sunday we are going to concrete the joists into place and put in some more block that will line up perfectly with the joists on each ends of the building.

Also the bathrooms will be 100% completed today. They are not pretty by any means, but they now all function. There was one bathroom that the school had worked on and was charged almost $3,000 dollars for it. We worked on 5 other bathrooms, and got them functioning equally well for around $200. This was due to the great leadership of David Malawey.

Today there is a small group of people who are staying at the agricultural school that we are at. They are staying there so that Kathy Donohue (registered nurse from Chicago) can do here teethbrushing educational seminar for them. Also Dr. Showalter and David Malawey are there doing a small site assessment at this school. They might be in need of a new building and also a potential site assessment.

That´s all I've got for today.

Everything is still going great. We are going to finish pouring columns today, if it doesn't rain. People are getting excited because everything is starting to look pretty good as far as getting everything completed. I personally am very excited to see how everything is progressing.

David Malawey is currently leading bathroom reparations, and all of the six bathrooms at the school are now functional, Two of the bathrooms at the beginning of the week did not function at all. Only a couple of toilets and sinks have yet to be fixed. He is also making an instruction manual so that if things break again it can easily be fixed again.

Today is market day in Solola, Guatemala, so there is a lot of cool food goods to find everywhere. It also seems that there is a soccer tournament going on right next door to the internet cafe we are at. Because of these two things the town is very busy and exciting today. It is pretty hard to travel anywhere because of the amount of people in the town.

That is all I have for today. If the shop is open tomorrow I will have more. If not this is probably the last time I´ll be able to update until Tuesday.

No sooner than I finished my last letter it started raining here. Because of this we had to unfortunately cut our day several hours short. Because of this extra work had to be done yesterday and we were unable to spare workers so this is why I was unable to write yesterday.

Everything is going well here. The stairs for the school are completed and one bathroom is almost completely fixed. We are mostly focusing on the columns of the school building. We have several people currently framing the columns, while those leftover are constantly mixing concrete and pouring it into the columns. We hope to finish framing everything today and finish pouring tomorrow. We are also hoping to start putting up the first two roof trusses today.

We are all very worn out from all the work that we are doing, but are making sure we are keeping on task. When we went to lunch you could see the weary looks on peoples faces, but after another amazing meal from Claudia at her restaurant "Los Carretas de Jose´s" everyone felt far more refreshed and ready for another afternoons work. She has made us some wonderful Guatemalan dishes such as black beans eggs and tortillas. She has also made us feel a bit more a home with a couple of her meals, her club sandwich included.

Now I must get back to work so that we can hopefully finish soon.

There is not a whole lot different today from yesterday, as far as what people are working on. We still have a group on the stairs, the school building, and the bathroom.

The group that is working on the stairs finished putting the first and lower set of stairs in place late yesterday. Today they have started working on hanging and putting the second set of stairs in place. It has become a slow process due to that they keep wearing out drill bits on the steel, but the stairs should be in place and most of the concrete poured on them by the end of the day, if it doesn't start raining.

The group that is working on the building are still pouring concrete to form the pillars of classrooms. We have almost all the rebar forms in places, we just now have the issue of building the forms and pouring the concrete in the forms. They are also finishing up the last couple rows of block that has to be laid in place. This also should be done by the end of the day, that is if the rain stays away.

The group that was working in the bathrooms was stalled for the first half of the day so that they could help lift the stairs into place. But now that the stairs are almost mounted the bathroom crew should be placing the new pipe and also pouring concrete to set the pipe permanently in place.

Today the registered nurse, Kathy Donohue, that traveled with us went from classroom to classroom handing out toothbrushes and toothpaste showing the children how to do it properly. Through the translations of both Phil McGee and Gabriel Olivio the kids thoroughly enjoyed the demonstration and the free toothbrushes after the show. We even saw a group of kids head straight to the sink at their recess and start brushing their teeth the way they were shown.

That is all for now... there should be more tomorrow.

Andrew Blair, leader of the Engineers Without Borders trip to Guatemala, shares this post about the Missouri S&T team's journey to Guatemala.

So far in Guatemala everything is going alright. Yesterday (Sunday May 18th) we flew out without a hitch. After leaving St. Louis around 5:45AM we spent approximately 4 and a half hours on two different planes. After we got off the planes we had to spend a bit more than 4 hours driving from Guatemala City to Solola.

Once we arrived in Solola we were surprised by our in country contact Mario Corzo that we had a slightly better place to stay than we originally thought. Instead of staying on the floor of the school that we are working at we were told that we could stay in a small house at an agriculture school on the other side of the city of Guatemala. We are still sleeping on the floor, but now have showers and mattress pads to sleep on. It makes the shock of living in a different country a little less. After we showed up at the house, we went out and got dinner from a local restaurant. Then we were so tired we all went to bed at the late hour of 9:00PM so that we could wake up for the next days work at 6:00AM

Now it is about 2:00 in Guatemala and we took a small break after eating so that we could send this letter. We currently have three different teams working at the school. One team is taking some prefabricated stairs and connecting them from the ground to the second floor of the school. Another group is finishing off the little block laying that needs to be done, and also pouring concrete to form the pillars of the rooms. The third group is currently working on disinfecting and washing out one of the bathroom units. The bathroom group is also chiseling out a clogged pipe from under the concrete urinal so that it can be replaced.

That is about all that is going on currently. I´ll have more information on what is being worked on at a future date.

A group of MIssouri S&T students are back from Haiti after spending several days on a site assessment. KRCG's Amelia Waters caught up with the group on campus following their return. Here's her take on their trip:

The trip wasn't about partying. It was about passing on what they know to help save lives.
"At first they were like why are you here and then we were like we wanna help you," mentioned sophomore and engineering management major Alexis Campbell, "So they were very welcoming."
"When we were talking to them anytime we came up, talked about water they would just say, 'Yes! Yes!', told senior and civil engineering major Dan Kientz, "Because they know it's a big problem and it's why their children get sick."
Water samples they collected showed traces of bacteria, E. coli and coliform in the area.

Watch more videos from the trip here.

Members of UMR's chapter of Engineers Without Borders kept themselves busy during break.

Katie Fritts of Kansas City, Mo., a sophomore in mechanical engineering, recently returned from her trip to Honduras with the UMR chapter of Engineers Without Borders. She's pictured here with a kindergarten class. The trip was the first of many as the chapter plans to upgrade the existing system and add another water tank. The end result of their efforts means 7,200 people will have consistent potable water.

The EWB experience changes UMR students. It also makes a future possible for thousands. What a great partnership.

Rick Stephenson, advisor of the UMR chapter of Engineers Without Borders, sent Visions a link to La Prensa, the major newspaper in Honduras. The article about EWB's efforts was the paper's lead story. EWB was featured on a full page in the Valle de Sula section with quotes and pictures, like the one here.

Stephenson sums up this week's journey like this: "Great trip, great students, much need. We will save lives here."

Couldn't have said it better myself.