Columbia University’s chapter of Engineers Without Borders was rewarded in a big way last week after months of working to engineer sustainable development solutions for communities in Uganda, Ghana, and India.
The Uganda group won the second round of the Environmental Protection Agency’s P3—People, Prosperity and the Planet—competition. This honor, which comes with a $75,000 grant, is the first one awarded to the chapter at this level, although all three site groups won the first round of the competition at some point.
“We are all really, really proud of our Uganda program and excited about the possibilities it [the award] opens up for expanding the scope of our Uganda program,” said Allison Schoeneck, SEAS ’10 and CU-EWB president.
The award came last week after a few members of CU-EWB’s Uganda team—Matt Basinger, SEAS graduate student; Janelle Heslop, SEAS ’10; Sara del Fierro, CC ’10; Jennifer Wang, SEAS ’10; Jin Wang, SEAS ’10; Lacey Gleason, CC ’12; and Watue Sowaprux, SEAS’12—travelled to the EPA’s fifth annual P3 exposition in Washington, DC to showcase their project on the National Mall.
The Uganda group within the Columbia chapter of EWB, comprised of 15-20 SEAS students, met regularly to work on the project, which del Fierro described as “a stationary diesel engine that can be attached to different agro-processing equipment, which we have modified to run on straight vegetable oil, thereby avoiding the high cost of diesel and utilizing a local crop called jatropha.”
“At first, we couldn’t believe we won. We knew we had an amazing project, but seeing the competition that weekend ... we knew we would have a run for our money,” said del Fierro, Uganda liaison, of seeing the 43 other teams they competed against.
Del Fierro said the Columbia team had an edge over the competition, largely because of its connections to local communities and institutions in Uganda, which she said made their project more sustainable in a lot of ways.
The group will use the $75,000 grant to expand their work in Uganda. “The prize money will basically be going towards Phase II of this project, with a focus on researching jatropha, mobilizing farmers, and sharing information and best practices among the different partners and the farming coop network,” del Fierro said.
When del Fierro joined CU-EWB two years ago as a sophomore, she began working with the Uganda team, which, being the newest team, only had six members. Still, they managed to win Phase I of the P3 competition, securing a $10,000 grant. “It’s really awesome to see how far we’ve come, both with our program and our team,” del Fierro said.
The other winners were from the University of Arizona, Drexel University, University of South Florida, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and University of Tennessee at Knoxville.
Schoeneck said that CU-EWB is trying to get more involved in student life on campus while it continues to do good work abroad. She stressed that the group is always looking to include new members—engineers and non-engineers alike.
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