What started out as a small water project involving eight Sweet Briar engineering students and a boarding school in the mountains of Guatemala has blossomed into a multi-college venture with the additions of students and professors from the University of Virginia, Virginia Tech, North Carolina State University and Lynchburg College.
“We really have a motley crew,” Jim Durand, project leader and director of Sweet Briar’s engineering program said, laughing. “It’s neat how the project is growing. It started out just being a project between SBC and Guatemala, then Virginia Tech got involved with my initial trip to the region and it’s gone from there.”
On May 10 the SBC-led team will travel to Guatemala, where they’ve committed to build a water storage tank and a brick enclosure, called a spring box, to secure a natural spring. They also hope to connect the spring box to the storage tank with a pump that can be operated by hand or electrically. The goal is to help provide access to clean running water for the 64 students who attend the boarding school.
The project is the focus of an interdisciplinary course at Sweet Briar called Technology and Society: A Global Perspective. Over the past few months, word of the water project has spread. Now, 17 people will spend one to two weeks, in Guatemala.
Joining the Sweet Briar team is a mechanical engineering student from UVa. The student also speaks Spanish, and can help the team with translation, Durand said. Others include an anthropology major from N.C. State who will be studying the sociological implications of the project, and a Wilderness First Responder from Lynchburg College who will be responsible for the group’s health and safety.
The Virginia Tech chapter of Engineers Without Borders will head to the region in the fall to finish any work the Sweet Briar team is unable to complete. The Tech team will also test the water going into the storage tank and implement a water purification system.
“We have a lot of broad-based support and we’re not paying people to go. They are willing to go for the experience and the aspect of helping,” Durand said.
The boarding school is located in Xix, Chajul, El Quiché, one of the areas hardest hit by Guatemala’s 36-year civil war. The group will also be there during the rainy season, which may make completing the project a challenge, he said.
“We’re going down there with a plan, but we will need to be flexible.”
To prepare, SBC students have been working on a prototype of the water tank and spring box on campus. “Building the same thing here first, will teach the skills that are needed and ensure that in Guatemala the work moves as quickly as possible,” Durand said.
With less than two weeks to go, interest in the project continues to swell, Durand said. He cited the $11,600 – more than double their fundraising target – that SBC students raised through various on- and off-campus activities and the SBC staff member and Rotarian, who mentioned the project to the Amherst Rotary Club. The club has committed money to the project.
A retired teacher from Monelison Middle School also got wind of the Guatemala trip and asked SBC students to talk about the project with a group of eighth-graders who are participating in a water project of their own. The middle school students are raising money for a well through the Ryan’s Well Foundation.
The Sweet Briar-led group will return on May 27.
Each year, Sweet Briar's engineering students have an opportunity to participate in a design project "to change peoples' lives in impoverished areas of this country or throughout the world," the College's Web site says. International projects, like the Guatemala one, are scheduled to occur every other year, Durand said.
Sweet Briar is one of only two women’s colleges in the nation to offer degree programs in engineering.
– By Michelle Lurch-Shaw, SBC staff writer
