Engineers Without Borders

Jen Overlease

Most college students spend their summer vacation relaxing or hanging out with friends, but few travel across the world working to provide clean water to children attending school in a developing country on the other side of the globe.

Last summer, the Montana Tech Engineers Without Borders club sent McLaine Heringer to Kenya for six weeks to help implement water well drilling and construction of composting latrines.

Engineers Without Borders held a big auction with McLaine and his brother, Daniel Heringer, in charge of tracking down items to sell. The “Beyond Borders Banquet and Auction” raised $3,500 to fund the trip to Kenya. When asked about future fundraising project plans, McLain replied “As far as being in charge of trips, we are voting right now as a club where we will have a project of our own, so a decision hasn’t been made yet, but it is made as a club and planned for as a club.”

Engineers Without Borders (EWB) is a club where the objective is to take the education students gain at Montana Tech and share it with parts of the world where engineering projects are needed. “We are a small group but are very active and committed to what we do,” Said Heringer.  “Laura Jenkins is the president of the club, Raymond Olorunsola is our vice president, and we have meetings every Tuesday in Main 107.”

Becoming an official chapter at Montana Tech in November 2009, EWB is presently helping Kwhisiero Kenya with the MSU chapter by developing a process to help all the 58 primary schools within the district, by giving them either a well with clean water or a latrine.

So far, EWB put in two latrines at two different schools, along with one water well. MSU uses a design where they have a pit encased in cement that catches the waste. They alternate between two pits switching off every year, so that after not being used for a year the waste in a pit can be removed and used as fertilizer. “This is very important because many schools within the area don’t have a clean water source, and they can be very far away making children miss class, and it’s usually only girls that get water,” Heringer added. “Also, Latrines are very important, because the design MSU uses does not go into the ground. In Kenya there is no infrastructure, so all latrines are just very deep holes in the ground. This is bad because in all cases you get groundwater exposure to the human waste contaminating the water.”

Part of EWB's mission is to make a project be owned by the ones receiving it, so the club as a group does as little manual labor as possible. This is so the people who build it know the system inside and out and therefore, when we leave, can fix any problems. The added benefit is that we can put money into the economy and help out those who don’t have work. Kenya has an unemployment rate of 40%; many people are out of work and don’t have jobs. They don’t really have an industry to rely on other than tea.

 “We, as a group, just watch and make sure the building is being built the way it was designed, and advise if we run into any problems. The work I did was really over seeing, water testing, and prepping for next year.” Said McLaine.

McLaine said he gained a lot from the experience. “Overall it was a very good trip; I got to eat termites, eat some of the freshest and best tasting fruit I have ever had, meet some amazing people, and really get to dive into an amazing culture and atmosphere.”