On Wednesday November 6th our group had the opportunity to meet with Amanda Setiawan, the Vice President of the Engineers Without Borders Polytechnic Institute NYU Chapter. Engineers without Borders is a really interesting organization that reaches out to communities in need and helps them by creating long- term projects to boost their sustainability. The projects most often revolve around finding a way to to get the communities access to fresh water and a reliable energy sources. Their goal is to give these communities resources that will be able to last long after the project is done. They put a lot of thought into the sustainability of whatever they’re making so once they’re done with the project they’re done completely, they won’t have to revisit it. The process of planning and building depends upon the project. Most projects take over a year to complete. The NYU chapter has two projects that are currently in action, the first one is in Perquin, Morazan, El Salvador where they are building a waste water treatment system (the project started in 2009) and another in Gambia. After sitting down with Amanda we learned a lot about the projects and the organization. We learned about the technology behind them, about how they find issues in each community and how they go about fixing them. CAN YOU GIVE A SPECIFIC? Overall I think our first field work was a success.
