Personal Advancement
Engineering Without Borders to overcome povertyAs a “junior fellow” with Engineering Without Borders, Sarah Takaki spent her summer working in Africa. Bucket baths and a diet filled with maize and rice took a bit of getting used to, but were soon overshadowed by her efforts to help combat poverty. LINDA WHITE |
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 [ 2006-10-04 ] |
Nick Jimenez (centre) poses with his host family in front of their home in Zambia.
“I wanted to go in with an open mind and learn that our way of life is not necessarily the only way or the right way. It was extremely rewarding,” says Takaki, a student at the University of Western Ontario in London. She stayed with a local family, living in a compound that was home to nearly two dozen people.
Takaki was among 44 students from 24 Canadian universities who spent four months working in developing communities in Ghana, Zambia, Malawi, Mali, Burkina Faso and the Philippines on a wide variety of projects. She worked with the Community, Water & Sanitation Agency in Ghana and was paired with a long-time EWB volunteer.
“We visited various districts to learn more about the water and sanitation sectors and then focused on specialty teams and the challenges they face,” she says. “We assessed their strengths and weaknesses and hoped it would lead to the development of a program to build the skills of their teams.”
Takaki is completing a Master’s in mechanical engineering. Though the Oakville resident communicated primarily in English, she learned some Dagbani, the local dialect. “People in Tamale were quite used to seeing Westerners coming and doing volunteer work,” she says. “EWB takes a different approach (than other agencies). I was definitely doing more learning than teaching.”
Takaki learned about EWB while working one summer at AMEC, an international project management company that designs, delivers and supports infrastructure. It recently donated $30,000 to EWB’s chapter at the University of British Columbia (UBC) to fund one junior fellow a year for five years.
Nick Jimenez, a fourth-year civil engineering student at UBC, took advantage of that funding this year to work on small-scale earth dams in Zambia. “The dams give rural communities access to water year-round,” he says. “Our job was to repair them and help teach local people how to maintain them.”
He worked first-hand with farmers and was pleased to see them implementing the lessons he taught. He’d appreciate an opportunity to work with EWB again in the future. “I gained a lot of people skills. Now my education in Canada will help me do more development work in the future,” Jimenez says.
“It’s probably the best job I’ll ever have. I was involved in every stage of my project. It was a perfect balance of design … and dealing with people. It brings you back to Canada with different eyes.”
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