Engineers Without Borders:
SUNY-ESF Student Chapter
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2014 Year Report
SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry
2014
ABOUT ESF-EWB
SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry’s
Engineers Without Borders Student Chapter (ESFEWB) is a group of over eighty engineers, scientists,
landscape architects and environmental scholars with an
interest in international development. Group members
devote their time and energy to help the chapter build
sustainable infrastructure abroad while also increasing
domestic awareness of the needs of people in the
developing world. The rewards for these sacrifices will
be threefold: joy when the project is completed,
education on the principles of sustainable engineering
design, and experience gained while working with
fellow ESF-EWB members, professionals, and other
student organizations and EWB chapters.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
About ESF-EWB
EWB-USA Mission
Letter from the President
ESF-EWB Officers and Mentors
Honduras
Guatemala
Sponsors and Collaborators
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EWB-USA MISSION
“EWB-USA is a nonprofit humanitarian organization
established to support community-driven development
programs worldwide through partnerships that design
and implement sustainable engineering projects, while
creating transformative experiences that enrich global
perspectives and create responsible leaders.”
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2014
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LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT
At SUNY-ESF, I often find myself in awe,
entirely inspired and captured by the passion
that drives the students around me. That
passion that surrounds our campus becomes
even stronger within our club, providing
drive and motivation to better the world.
Through engineering and the encompassing
social practices, we are able to do just that;
following the hurdles, struggles, and failures
we are bound to experience given the nature
of development projects. With our skillful
mentors, leading advisors, and generous
sponsors we have been successful in
overcoming project challenges and have
made significant progress in our projects in
Honduras and Guatemala.
The 2013-2014 year marks the 11th
anniversary of the establishment of our
organization, an impressive feat of student,
faculty, and professional dedication to
improving the world. I am excited to share
this newsletter which showcases our club’s
work over the past year. I hope you enjoy
the read and consider reaching out to us to
learn more or how to support us in our
projects.
Sincerely,
Thomas J. Decker
President 2014-2015
ESF-EWB OFFICERS AND MENTORS
Thomas Decker Alex Caven
President
Treasurer
Kristina Macro
Vice President
Kurt Dirr
Web Master
Taylor Brown
Becky Meissner
Honduras Project Lead Tyler Pitts
Jeremy Driscoll
Douglas Reymore
Haley Canham
Guatemala Project Leads
USA Representative Report Editor
Dr. Theodore Endreny
Mark Fabian
PhD, PE, PH
Faculty Advisor
MS, Past PCV
Honduras Technical Mentor
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2014
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HONDURAS
ESF-ESS STUDENTS TRAVEL TO HONDURAS TO FINISH POTABLE WATER SUPPLY PROJECT
BY TAYLOR BROWN
In August 2014, students Thomas Decker
and Taylor Brown were led by Professor
Ted Endreny to Buena Vista, Honduras to
continue a project that the ESF-ESS club
has been working on since 2007. The
purpose of the trip was to meet with the
people in the community and their water
board to sign a new Memorandum of
Understanding (MOU), evaluate any repairs
the system needed, and to begin each of the
eight tasks left before 100% completion.
Before the project started, the community’s
source of water came from a precarious
system of rubber hoses that were prone to
leaks and contamination.
The gravity-fed water filtration and
distribution system implemented by ESS has
provided approximately 45 families with a
clean reliable source of water in their
households for drinking, bathing, cooking
and laundry.
The project was designed to be sustainable,
in that the people of the community, could
eventually take full ownership of the system
and be able to maintain the system without
financial dependence on ESS. The
community helped greatly during
implementation and learned how the system
works so that they could perform routine
maintenance. The establishment of the water
board was critical for the long-term success
of the project. Giving people in the
community leadership roles allows them to
be mobilizers of their community and gives
them a sense of pride. Another important
factor to the success of this project is the
partnership formed with the nongovernmental organization (NGO) Alfalit.
They have helped maintain contact with the
community, organized the purchase of
materials and equipment, contracted labor,
scheduled meetings, and carried out actual
implementation.
This project has faced many challenges,
which has delayed completion. Delivering
materials for implementation was difficult
during the rainy seasons. Funding was also
lost in 2009 when Honduras faced a coup
d’etat and the club needed to find alternate
funding.
After the trip this past August, the final
funds were received by the community to
finish the distribution system. As of October
2014, all tasks proposed in the MOU have
been completed and the implementation
phase of the project is finished. The next
steps are to complete assessment of the
project over the course of 2015, and to move
forward with project closeout.
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2014
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GUATEMALA
COLLABORATION WITH THE SYRACUSE PROFESSIONAL EWB CHAPTER
BY JEREMY DRISCOLL
Beginning in May 2014, ESF-ESS began
partnering with the Syracuse Professional
Chapter of Engineers Without Borders’
(EWB) project in Guatemala. The club’s
mission is to improve health and quality of
life in developing countries, through
sustainable engineering practices. The
specific goal for this project is to work with
a community to improve sanitation and
hygiene through improved latrines. An
initial trip in May 2014, included discussing
details of the project with community
leaders and identifying a site for latrines.
Our trip consisted of three professional
engineers and four students, three of whom
are ESF-ESS members.
We traveled to Las Majadas, a community
of 400 students and their families near the
Santa Maria volcano in Guatemala. The
water system in Las Majadas is unreliable,
overall hygiene is inadequate, and sanitation
principles are not well understood.
We met with a Peace Corps volunteer and a
health care worker, both working in Las
Majadas, to help with translation and to gain
a better understanding of the community’s
needs. The community already has
composting toilets, but they are a very basic
design and most are near the end of their
useful life. The project aims to develop a
latrine design that will last longer and be
more hygienic to use. During our trip, we
collected soil and surveying data at each
location to better compare our three
proposed toilet designs. We met with
students, parents, and community leaders to
get input on our designs to facilitate human
centered design.
We are currently working on an alternatives
analysis for an ideal latrine design. We are
excited to continue to work with the
Syracuse Professional Chapter and the
community of Las Majadas into the future.
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2014
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SPONSORS AND COLLABORATORS
HOW TO DONATE
You can make a donation/sponsorship by check, which can be sent to:
SUNY-ESF Cashier’s Office
102 Bray Hall
1 Forestry Drive
Syracuse, NY 13210
Sponsorship Categories
Gold - $1,000
Silver - $500
Bronze - $250
Please make checks payable to SUNY-ESF with Engineers Without Borders in the memo
As a 501(c)(3) non-profit, all donations to ESF-EWB are tax deductible
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2014
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Engineers Without Borders
SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry
For more information, please contact ESF-EWBSS at esfewbsd@gmail.com
Find us on Facebook as SUNY ESF Engineers Without Borders
Or check out our website at www.esf.edu/org/ewb
A special thank you to all our writers!
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