Send Auburn Engineers to Guatemala

The Auburn University Chapter of Engineers Without Borders is thrilled to begin our first project in Guatemala. A group of students and faculty advisors will be traveling to the Saloj Village this upcoming August to help implement our design. 

In Saloj, the current cost of sanitary water is 20% of the average weekly salary. Because of this, many families are forced to resort to other forms of drinking water, such as unfiltered rain collection to survive.

Our project design will supply water from a mountain spring to 250 people in the community. This Tiger Giving Day, help us travel and build this system for those who need fresh water.

Our pipeline design will also allow for future expansion in the coming years. In our design there will be a spring catchment system, a gravity-fed pipeline that is over 3000 meters long, a collection tank, and taps that individually supply more than 40 families. Possible challenges that our pipeline may encounter include traveling across a mountain, steep valley, major roadways, and aerial crossings.

The community’s need is not postponed by the pandemic. Because of this, we have plans to travel for ten days in August 2022. This trip will involve the largest travel team ever in our chapter’s history — 11 Auburn students and two faculty advisors. 

Through sending our students to implement the design first-hand our student engineers live the Auburn Creed through cultivating “sympathy with my fellow men and mutual helpfulness” and developing “knowledge to work wisely and train my mind and hands to work skillfully.”

Our project is much deeper than Engineering, it is life-changing to the families in Guatemala, and they are depending on us.