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Engineers With a Mission aid Honduras, Rwanda

Sept. 1, 2009

Courtesy Photo Engineers work here in Waco at the World Hunger Relief Farm to utilize their skills and talents in effective ways.

By Jenna Thompson
Reporter

This summer, Baylor students involved in Engineers With a Mission traveled the globe, using their skills to help those in need. From installing generators that provide electricity to remote villages in Honduras, to developing water purification systems for schools in Rwanda, these students applied their engineering knowledge and hard work to help meet basic needs in undeveloped nations.

Engineers with a Mission is a nonprofit student organization that was founded at Baylor in 2004 by Leah Richter, a Baylor alumna. There are currently 75 members in the organization.

According to their mission statement, Engineers With a Mission is "committed to training, mobilizing, and sending engineers and engineering students of all disciplines, for the purpose of providing appropriate technical solutions and support to the missions community serving in the underdeveloped regions of the world."

The organization has been making trips to Honduras for four years, said Greenville senior Greg Bond, president of Engineers With a Mission.

In May, some members of the group traveled to two Honduran villages. In Danta Uno, the first village, students devoted their energy to installing piping that completed a generator, providing the villagers with continuous electricity for the first time. In Pueblo Nuevo, the students began to develop a hydro-electric generator, which is predicted to provide electricity for more than 60 homes.

"I enjoyed the children. They were so excited and wanted to do anything they could to bring [the village] electricity," said Spring senior Diana Joseph, a member of the group. "It was cool to see different kinds of engineers unite together for a common goal. It brought to life the Bible verse that talks about being the 'light of the world.'"In addition to the trip to Honduras this summer, the group sent another group of students to Rwanda on a second mission.

The students who traveled to Rwanda worked closely with an elementary and high school in a village called Musanze. Their activities included calculating details needed to lay pipelines for a well on the school grounds, and water purification efforts.

Engineers work here in Waco at the World Hunger Relief Farm to utilize their skills and talents in effective ways.

Water purification was an important task, said Brian Fischer, a senior from Phoenix, AZ, because the people in Musanze were often not boiling water for the amount of time necessary for purification.

Thanks to the new system, Fischer said, the water used for cooking and drinking in the school is now safe to consume, and the boiling process is no longer necessary. The group also set out to design solar panels to provide alternative energy to a computer lab, but they were unable to complete it due to complications with shipping materials.

Along with mission trips abroad, Engineers With a Mission exercises their efforts locally through volunteer work with the World Hunger Relief, Inc., located in Elm Mott. Saturday,the PIT, Project Implementation and Testing crew, went to the World Hunger Farm to evaluate two projects they have been developing.

"Today we're trying to get a status update on where we are on the projects," Bond said.

The group is working on building a model wind turbine that can be used in Third World countries, as well as solar panels to be placed atop the farm's chicken coops. Aside from being the site for the Engineers With a Mission projects, the World Hunger Farm produces organic vegetables, milk, eggs, meat and pecans to sell locally, and practices composting and drip irrigation techniques.

"The farm is about sustainable agriculture," faculty adviser Brian Thomas said the. "The goal is to get interns who later go into the world and demonstrate what they have learned." that talks about being the 'light of the world.'"

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