An engineering student organization postponed their trip to northwest Uganda, where they planned to start installing a learning center, for the second time this academic year due to limited funds.
The Uganda team from GW’s chapter of Engineers Without Borders now plans to visit their project site in Yumbe, Uganda, in June after pushing back the trip earlier this semester. Leaders of the organization said limited funding resources from grants, bake sales and University allocations hinder their ability to travel internationally and initiate construction on their projects.
Senior Tamar Todd, the co-lead of EWB’s project in Yumbe, Uganda, said the group previously planned on going to Uganda this past summer and later postponed it to winter break but ultimately delayed the trip again to June after raising $17,000 out of their goal of $20,000 for the trip to Yumbe. She said EWB will continue applying for grants, reaching out to companies for donations and hosting on-campus fundraisers to try and reach their goal.
The learning center will be located on the property of their nongovernmental organization, Nested Savings — an organization dedicated to “alleviating poverty” in Africa through environmentally friendly initiatives — along with their single-room library. Each EWB projects have an assigned nongovernmental organization that assists with connecting team members with members of the community in their project location.
Todd said the learning center will contain study rooms, books, computer labs, a conference room and an early child development center to expand educational access and opportunities for all community members. She added that the group will begin setting the foundation for the center and overseeing the early stages of construction during their trip in June.
“The purpose of this Learning Center is for everyone to have access to education, not just if you’re in formal education,” Todd said.
Grace Zereski, a sophomore and co-lead of the project in Uganda, said the organization decided to delay their trip to Yumbe early in the semester to June during Uganda’s dry season — a period of time with low amounts of rainfall — to allow EWB more time to raise money and reach their $20,000 goal.
Zereski said the group relied on fundraising to reach their goals through profit shares with Panera, bake sales, grants and a fundraising event offering henna tattoos. She added that herself and another member of the group are Clark Engineering Scholar recipients, which is a scholarship for engineering students that combine engineering, business, leadership and community service, which EWB uses for additional funding for their projects.
Zereski said EWB raised $6,000 on Giving Tuesday last week and is waiting to hear back from a few grants, but the group believes that they’ll receive them since they’ve gotten the same grants in the past.
“We are confident that we will be traveling this June,” Zereski said. “I don’t see it being pushed back any further.”
Junior Isabella Perusse, the president of EWB and team lead of the organization’s project in Bhutiya, India, said her team finished the six-yearlong project in India in May, where they installed a percolation pond — a pond that collects rainwater and use gravel and sand to allow the runoff to replenish groundwater — to provide water for agricultural needs due to water scarcity within the community.
Perusse said her team is trying to gain enough funding through fundraising, donations from different companies, the Student Government Association and School of Engineering & Applied Science allocations and grants to travel to Bhutiya next semester to check on the pond and community members to see if it’s working properly.
If EWB does not raise enough money, Perusse said the group will have to conduct virtual monitoring and evaluation through phone calls with the team’s partnering nongovernment organization, Jagran Jan Vikas Samiti, and India’s chapter of EWB.
She added that EWB is in the “monitoring and evaluation” phase of the project where members of the group will communicate with their NGO to receive updates on the pond and if there are any issues.
“Every week, I meet with my team and we figure out, at least right now, we’re focusing on how do we make sure that this project is going to work, what steps do we take to make sure that it’s actually raising more water levels and make sure that it’s working?” Perusse said.
Perusse said the percolation pond has overgrowth of vegetation, which takes the water to allow plants like weeds to grow, instead of putting the water in the ground for recharge purposes. She said the organization has to wait until the water lowers in the pond to remove the growth and will later add sand at the bottom of the pond to try and prevent growth.
“Our hope is that that water will eventually decrease into the ground during the dry season,” Perusse said.
