Engineers for a Sustainable World
A vehicle for working on technical problems in developing communities
At 7:30 in the evening it was totally dark and a group of ten Penn State undergraduate engineering students and their adviser were sitting exhausted around the campfire in Nueva Esperanza, El Salvador – a rural, agricultural community in southeast El Salvador. The team had just spent the entire day in 110 degree temperatures with high humidity constructing the bridge they had designed during the preceding semester – without heavy equipment of any kind. The bridge would allow veterans from the Salvadoran civil war who had their legs amputated to cross the river dry rather than wade chest deep waters to access their farmlands. With no electricity available, the PSU team had to rise at 4:15 a.m. in order to make the best use of the available daylight and to avoid working during the hottest part of the day. It had taken the entire morning just to dig the well by hand in order to obtain the water required to mix the concrete for the foundation. The entire foundation needed to be excavated by hand. The team was learning what nearly half the population of the world experiences daily in terms of the toil required to improve their environment.
The student’s design reduced construction costs for the bridge by an estimated 20%. The student’s homes for the multiple week visit were with village family’s who volunteered to have them stay with them – even though the families earn only approximately $2 per day. The students gain invaluable insights into the political, economic, and historical perspectives of a community quite difference from their own. They come away transformed by the experience.
