While consulting on infrastructure and development projects abroad, the local chapter of Engineers Without Borders focuses on truly understanding local cultures for sustainable development.
By Emma Dutton
For five years, dozens of Chicago volunteers from Engineers Without Borders helped the 300 residents of a rural Mexican town, Cuetzala de la Reforma in Guerrero; avoid rationing water during the seven-month dry season.
Together they built a daily water supply system, a rain-harvested hand washing station for a school and a 100,000-gallon storage tank — about the size of five cargo shipping containers — to supply farmers with enough water for their crops and livestock. Last fall EWB project manager Ken Kastman, 67, and his team planned a four-day follow-up trip to the village. They only stayed for two. The water pump worked. The tank wasn’t leaking. The townspeople had everything under control. “To us, that’s a real home run,” says Kastman.
EWB volunteers succeed because they allow locals to control the projects, from planning to building to maintenance. “Engineering is the easiest thing for us to do,” Kastman says. “Community relations and cultural understanding and awareness is the more difficult aspect to make these things work.”
Since 2005, the local EWB chapter grew from a few members to more than 100 who are tackling six projects — two in Guatemala, two in Honduras, one in Kenya and one in Burkina Faso. EWB requires communities to approach the organization of their own accord to ask about getting involved. A Chicago mechanical engineer originally from Cuetzala de la Reforma asked EWB to support her hometown, and she acted as a liaison throughout the five-year project.
“If that community was empowered enough to reach out to us, it means they have exhausted all of their local resources,” EWB executive director Cathy Leslie says. “Those are communities that we want to work with.”
Even if the communities are willing, it’s no easy task to solve their complicated problems. Ten years after the founding of the national organization, here’s how EWB strives to perfect its practice:
Understand the local culture
In Cuetzala de la Reforma, EWB volunteers installed dry-composting toilets that catch waste with woodchips, ashes, sawdust and leaves. Local leaders told Kastman it was a good idea without mentioning another project — repairing a septic system for flush toilets. Despite the town’s water shortage, the residents preferred to flush and they weren’t interested in changing that cultural norm. Kastman says he never got a straight answer about why the locals said yes and meant no, but the community never used the composting toilets.
“It breaks my heart to see relics of old NGO projects that aren’t being used or maintained,” says Emily Wigley, 26, president of the local EWB chapter.
According to EWB leaders, a project works when the townspeople maintain the infrastructure long after outside help leaves. Development consultant Drew Bishop, who has been working with NGOs and in refugee camps since childhood, is on the same page. Local community members receiving help must be empowered to plan and execute the work, he says.
“It’s the only way you’re going to ever have lasting impact, lasting change,” Bishop says.
Empower townspeople
When EWB works with a group, the process begins with assessment trips. The volunteers evaluate the community’s health and needs, suggest improvements and compare results with locals who are personally invested in the projects.
The actual construction trips usually last less than two weeks. In Cuetzala de la Reforma, Kastman says the locals put in thousands of hours constructing the water tank after the EWB volunteers helped them set it up. “I like to look at us as a facilitator of engineering skills,” Kastman says.
Timeline by Mike DiFerdinando
For more information about the Chicago chapter of EWB, visit ewb-usa-chicago.org.
