Economic Growth Rwanda Project #15517

Help Provide Clean Water to Cyanika, Rwanda.

by Engineers Without Borders - Boulder

Help Provide Clean Water to Cyanika, Rwanda.

Project Report | Aug 30, 2017
Summer 2017 Progress Report

By Zayna Pieper | Project Manager

The Children of Cyanika, Rwanda

This summer has been eventful for our team. We had the wonderful opportunity to visit the four sites in which we have already implemented our water catchment systems and look into the new site for the summer of 2018. However before I give too many details, our team would like to thank our donors. The work that we do is currently affecting 2,000 people in rural Rwanda who were previously walking many miles to obtain water during the drought season. The necessity and frequency of obtaining water had prevented women from working full time, children from going to school, and the eldery from bathing. The systems are expensive, but the value they add the to lives of people around the world is priceless. Thank you for your continued support and encourgement.

The four systems we already had in place are in good functioning order. We closed out three of our systems this summer, as we have ended our five year commitment with them. The community is fully prepared to maintain the systems, and we are leaving after a wonderful relationship. In the other systems, there were a few minor problems with leaves getting caught in the filtration system, which our team repaired with simple design solutions and local materials. Kibaya, our next implementation site, will be in our biggest community yet. We want to put in four tanks for this system as the demand for water is so high in the community. We are hopeful for the project and have established a healthy relationship with the village of Kibaya. Overall, the people of Cyanika are happy with the systems and are requesting more systems as the change in their communities has been so positive. Community feedback is important to us, and one of the most important pieces we received was a prefernce for the butterfly style roof, as they feel it captures a greater amount of rainwater. This will be a discussion point as we work through designs for implementation.

The school year has just begun and regular meetings will begin this week for our members. A new round of college freshman will be joining us in September and our team cannot wait! Beyond helping other people around the world, EWB works to teach social responsibility and technical skill to the students who are involved. This fall will be a wonderful opportnity to do that.

Your generous donations and continual support make all of these things possible.

Thank you,

Zayna Pieper

CU EWB Rwanda Project Manager

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Jun 2, 2017
June 17th 2017 Progress Report

By Samantha Hardy | Project Manager

There has been a lot of progress for our Engineers Without Borders team in the past few months. We would first like to thank our recent donors; every contribution helps us reach our goals! Last month we welcomed in our new leadership. I, Samantha Hardy, along with my friend Zayna Pieper are the new Project Managers. We also welcomed a new Treasurer and Education Team Lead.We hope to grow our team, financially and physically, while speeding up our current construction plans in hopes to build two systems every year instead of one every other year, as we do now. That means more than ever we need your help! An average system costs $24,000 which we cannot meet without your help.

We are ramping up for our assessment trip at our new site. Our travel team has been preparing for our two week trip to Kibaya. We are excited to meet with the community water board and discuss plans for future construction. We will also be checking into our previous systems and ensuring they are still providing community with viable drinking water. As an Engineers Without Borders team, we are obligated to serve each community for five years after construction. This period serves to acclimate the community to the new system, and gives them a reliable source when any problems arise. Luckily, we have never experienced a problem with our systems and are excited to close out three of our five systems in the upcoming year.

We recently faced a financial obstacle that has greatly affected our ability to work in country. Our main source of funding, through which we usually obtain $20,000-$30,000 annually, has cut back funding to only about $5,000. This is a major set back for us this year and although we are still able to follow through with our travel plans this year, travel in the future will be greatly diminished. We are hoping to utilize GlobalGiving and other sources more in the upcoming year, and we thank you in advance for your donation and cooperation.

Thank you for your help to this point and we look forward to working with all of you in the future,

Samantha Hardy

Rwanda Project Manager

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Mar 20, 2017
Spring Semester Updates

By Ellis Aune | Project Manager

Community Vision Board Responsible for the Systems

Dear Friends, Alumni, Donors, and Members,

Thank you as always for your amazing and continued support. We can't do it without you! We hope all is well through the winter season.

The spring semester for our program is primarily focused on preparing our team for travel over the summer, which we do by involving all of our members in the design, fundraising, and documentation process. We look forward to finding more funding opportunities, as our trip this summer is expected to cost upwards of $12,000.

We have decided on a team for travel, and we are very excited to have so much interest and involvement in our program. We will be sending three students (four if we can find enough money) and a professional mentor who traveled with us last summer, and they will be traveling for two to three weeks. As we hammer out the details of the summer travel, we are excited to have our travel team get to know each other and our community even better!

The time our travel team will spend in-country will be primarily focused on monitoring and evaluating the previous four implemented systems to ensure they are functioning properly and to be available for any questions or concerns the community might have. We are excited to report that there have been no issues with the most recent implementation, and after the first rainy season, the new system was able to provide several hundred more people with a sustainable source of water through the subsequent dry season. Our community has taken incredible ownership of all of the implementations and has a functioning monetary and collection system in place that allows each system to be financially self-sustaining. Furthermore, our team will assess a fifth site by the name of Kibaya for a planned fifth implementation in the summer of 2018.

In addition to our travel plans, we are proud of our successful and continued partnership with the University Hills Elementary School, where we have just started our third semester of the after school program. Each week, we send several of our members to 1st and 2nd-grade student group to teach an interactive, internationally focused after-school engineering program. Our members all report loving the activities, and the kids have a great time designing and building their own solutions to international engineering problems in an engaging, creative way.

Finally, we always try to keep a strong focus on our own team and cohesion, so that we can ensure everyone benefits and learns from each other. Each week we have a presentation about various aspects of Rwandan culture, and we have had a speaker from the NGO we partner with come and talk more about the work that her organization does in addition to supporting our program. We're excited to continue engaging our members and recruiting more to assist us in our incredible international work.

Thank you again for you continued support, and look for another update as we get closer to summer travel!

Links:

Travel Blog

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