Geography Grad Students Donate Time and Skills To Engineers Without Borders

UCSB’s chapter of Engineers Without Borders (EWB) received an important award at the 2006 EWB-USA International Conference in Houston, TX in February. The group was awarded the “Sustainable Legacy Award” for its ongoing work in Araypallpa, Peru. The $1,000 award will be used to continue the group’s work in Peru. Graduate students Vered Doctori Blass (Bren) and Tammy Ben-Yacov (ECE) and staff advisors Mary Dinh and David Bothman (Mechanical Engineering) represented UCSB at the conference.

Geography reps for EWB are grad students Lisa Murawski and Jory Hecht (see the 2005 archive article, “Summer 2005 – Geography Grad Students Join Forces With Engineers Without Borders”). Volunteers from UCSB have traveled to Araypallpa during the past two summers to install solar-electric lighting and to install water filtration equipment in the village. Health and water quality assessments were also completed. Residents of Araypallpa and EWB-UCSB members plan the projects together so that improvements and maintenance will continue without EWB’s presence. During next summer’s trip, students will visit other nearby villages to investigate possible projects in the future. EWB-UCSB has also completed a project in Mae Nam Kunh, Thailand, and is currently working on a biofuel project in Mali. The EWB-UCSB chapter enjoys broad membership on campus including both undergraduates and graduate students from many of the science, humanities, and social science departments. Additional information about EWB-UCSB is available on their web site: http://www.engineering.ucsb.edu/~ewb-ucsb/.