Newsletters
“When the well is dry, we learn the worth of water.”
Fall 2019 NEWSlETTER
Spring semester of 2019 was a big one for EWB on campus. After the club went from 10 members to 35, many of our new friends were eager to keep up the great work they had been doing in the Fall. An entirely new Executive Board was elected, consisting of seven young and excited freshmen and three returning upperclassmen! With an expansion of the board came new title roles such as Treasurer and Sustainability Chair. In addition to new faces on the Executive Board, our Outreach Committee was hard at work on brand new T-shirt ideas! This committee also hosted a fun bonding experience (and a great way to use our Mardi Gras throws) to make miniature Mardi Gras Parade Floats out of shoe boxes! The Spring Letter Writing Campaign, head by the Fundraising Committee, also went off without a hitch and brought in new funds and donors. A group was also sent to Laquigo at the end of the semester... read on to see how it went!
April 2019 NEWSlETTER
This semester, Tulane Engineers Without Borders added a new Sustainability Committee. There are several environmental factors that we must consider when working on a project that will so heavily affect the physical community of Laquigo. The Sustainability Committee aims to take a public health and natural resources perspective to this project. They have conducted fantastic work thus far, and we are excited to have added this vital addition to our club.
November 2018 NEWSlETTER
From macroscopic to microscopic levels, water is abundant. 71% of the Earth is covered by water. 60% of the human body is made of water. 75% of an individual cell is water. This necessary compound is a clear requirement for survival.
Now, imagine lacking a consistent source of water and the plethora of problems that could arise. For the Laquigo community in Ecuador, this issue is a daily reality. The community’s sole water source comes from a pipeline that they share with two other communities. The distribution of water from this pipeline is manually controlled by one of these two other communities. As a result, the water source is often physically blocked from reaching the Laquigo community. This robs the families of Laquigo of a sufficient amount of water available to support everyday needs. Tulane Engineers Without Borders (TEWB) has made it its mission to come up with a practical solution to the water problem in Laquigo. With the creativity and critical thinking of its design team and generous contributions from donors within and outside of the Tulane community, TEWB is making headway on creating change for thousands of lives in Laquigo. With our team and your help, we can change lives.
Summer 2018 NEWSlETTER
If Tulane students using their education to engineer life-sustaining infrastructure sounds interesting, this newsletter is for you.
Our mission is to empower communities through engineering projects that meet their basic human needs. We are an organization of students working alongside Engineers Without Borders - an international nonprofit - which pairs collegiate organizations like ours to communities in need around the world.
At home, our engineering projects restore and beautify New Orleans. Abroad, we are currently working to bring safe, sustainable drinking water to our community partner - Laquigo, Ecuador - where it is crucially needed.
The generous support of our donors enable our work in Laquigo and elsewhere. We invite you to read through this letter on Laquigo, Tulane EWB, and building a lasting water solution.
FEBRUARY 2018 Newsletter
Tulane Engineers without Borders are currently working alongside Laquigo, Ecuador, a small village in central Ecuador, with the goal of extending water availability to the rural community. Laquigo is experiencing rapid population growth and there is not enough water to go around. This leaves citizens finding other sources of water that are dangerous to consume. A new water system would provide clean water for the entire community, changing hundreds of citizens’ lives enabling improvements in healthcare, education, long-term sustainability and enabling future growth of the community…
October 2017 Newsletter
After months of research and planning, we are excited to finally confirm our second trip to Laquigo for January! On this trip we look to further investigate environmental conditions and pitch potential solutions to the community. In order to make this trip possible, we are stepping up our fundraising efforts. Thus far, we have raised over $15,000 and this is thanks to the generous donations from alumni and other supporters of our project. Without them, none of this would be possible…
August 2017 Newsletter
After researching each engineering solution in more detail, we narrowed our list of potential solutions down to five: collect atmospheric water with a mesh net; build a second pipe to replace the current pipe; implement a pumped water pipe; filter the nearby Ambato River; and drill a well. This was accomplished by assigning a potential solution to each member and presenting a different potential solution each week. After all solutions were presented, as a group we voted on the most viable options. We then continued our research on those specific solutions to develop plans of action and are currently at this stage in the process…
Summer 2017 Newsletter
Last fall, three of our members and a faculty mentor went on an assessment trip to gather more information on the logistics of the issue in order to devise a long-term, environmentally safe solution. The current water system uses a PVC pipe which extends from an aquifer site, adding more sources as it travels about 21 km. To relieve the built up pressure, holes were drilled into the pipe, wasting a large amount of the potential water. Laquigo shares this water with two other neighboring villages, Pinllo and Lacon. Pinllo is the rightful owner of the pipeline and Laquigo due to their substantially larger population and economic reliance on tourism. As owner of the pipeline, Pinllo controls a valve that can deny water to Laquigo, and according to Laquigo, shuts off water flow during the weekends…
