A charitable break for Penn engineers

For 13 Penn students, the opportunity to help a developing nation improve its water supply was the opportunity of a lifetime, one so attractive they even gave up their winter vacations to do it.

The students, members of a campus student organization called Engineers Without Borders, have worked since the start of the year to help the residents in the town of Kobe, Cameroon to design and build a sustainable water distribution system.

A semester of hard work at Penn culminated in a trip to Cameroon over winter break to start implementing the project.

The students say the system will help the town and surrounding villages gain access to better and more abundant water and health care.

According to the EWB Web site, in addition to providing better drinking water for the residents and reducing the probability of water-borne illness, the clean water access will allow local officials to open a state-of-the-art medical center that could serve as many as 15,000 residents.

Over the next year, the participants hope to see the town's residents finish the project and realize what they say could be enormous benefits to the region.

Penn's chapter of EWB has been doing projects in West Philadelphia and developing nations since 2004, but organizers said the Cameroon trip was unique for the diversity of the students involved and the potential benefits of the water system to the region.

Planning and preparation for the Cameroon construction has been in the works since last June, when Penn students made their first trip to Africa. Construction in Cameroon could continue throughout the rest of the year.

"We were able to get about as much done as possible during the short time available," explained Engineering professor John Keenan, one of the trip's primary faculty planners.

Sarah Casey, an Engineering senior and one of the organizers, called the project "a partnership" involving "give and take" with Cameroon locals in order to ensure they had the tools and knowledge necessary to finish the construction after the Penn students went home.

"Even now, the community has a ton of work to do," she added.

Because of the magnitude of the project, the 13 students who attended - including 11 Engineering students and members of every undergraduate class - dedicated a portion of their fall class schedule to learn about the design and building techniques they would need to know for the trip, and to prepare construction manuals for the Cameroonians.

Allison Goldman, one of the two freshmen who went on the trip, said she learned about Penn EWB on Locust Walk but had no prior engineering expertise.

"It just seemed like an interesting opportunity," she said. "What was really cool about this was that we actually built something with a direct impact."

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