Engineers Without Borders-USA

Lack of water is a huge issue for the 300 households of Valle Bonito, a remote Honduran village. A water system installed 20 years ago to bring water from a mountain spring to the village is only able to supply 20 percent of the community’s current water needs. EWB-USA stepped into help. Adopted by the DC Professional Partners Chapter, the Valle Bonito project is managed by CH2M HILL engineer Brock Emerson. After visiting the community to assess its needs and perform a baseline health survey, the EWB-USA team...

For six months out of the year, the community of Makili, Mali, suffers a severe drought. Every year, the 2,000 residents are plagued with malnutrition due to the lack of protein in their diet. In 2007, the University of Pittsburgh chapter of EWB-USA took on a project to develop designs and implementation plans to help the community create a tilapia fish farm, which will provide nutritious food and a source of income for residents all year. Suman Ramasundaram, a CH2M HILL engineer who mentors the chapter, recently returned from a site assessment trip to Makili...

Emily Holtzclaw and Greta Zornes are engineers who focus on water resources at CH2M HILL. What distinguishes them from most other engineers in their field is that in 2006 they teamed up to mentor a group of six Rice University students on an EWB-USA project in Bernardino Diaz Ochoa, Nicaragua. During the survey trip to the community the team discovered that the village lacked clean water, electricity, a reliable source of fresh water and a health center...