The community highlights inequality in design by launching seven impactful projects worldwide
Around the world, local infrastructure plays a key role in defining an area’s quality of life.
In Ghana, for example, many schools do not have infrastructure for toilets or pit latrines and running water, which impacts student attendance and performance, especially female students who require sanitary hygiene facilities.
In fact,10% of girls miss school each month due to lack of quality sanitation facilities. This ultimately limits their career opportunities to informal work such as selling water and snacks on the streets.
What can be done?
Many external organisations have tried to build toilets, wells and buildings to support communities, but few projects are sustainable because they do not consider local needs and systematic issues.
Existing playspace at Kilómetro 13 in Buenos Aires
In place of voluntourism and generic charity, an engineering approach incorporating the local resources, advantages and obstacles of individual communities can lead to lasting and impactful results.
Meet Engineers Without Borders
Engineers Without Borders (EWB) is a network of organisations that follows a locally driven approach.
EWB is a collection of nonprofit organisations worldwide that aim to address global inequity and injustice through engineering solutions. The network’s presence has reached across all major global regions since its founding in the early 1980s.
Recently, EWB highlighted seven of its key projects worldwide where EWB’s communities aim to build infrastructure for clean water, quality sanitation, reliable energy and safe spaces for women and girls.
Katie Cresswell-Maynard, executive director, Engineers Without Borders International
"Women and girls often bear the burden of lack of access to infrastructure, missing out on the opportunity to improve their own lives and the lives of those around them,” said Engineers Without Borders International's executive director Katie Cresswell-Maynard.
The seven projects are:
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Argentina: Safe spaces for children to support working mothers
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Ghana: School toilets made from plastic waste
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Ghana: Sustainable farming vocations for girls
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Kenya: Reliable water supply for girl’s school
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Malaysia: Water collection infrastructure
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Sierra Leone: Women’s training centre infrastructure and educational institution
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Zimbabwe: School and sanitation facilities
Collaborating locally
One project in Ghana is led by EWB The Netherlands (EWB NL) and local Ghanaian entrepreneur Afua Opare-Baidu. Opare-Baidu founded the start-up TrashSmart, which converts plastic waste into bricks that EWB hopes to use to build school toilet blocks that support girls’ needs.
Ghana produces 1.1m tonnes of plastic waste each year, but municipalities only have the means to recycle 5% of it. This leads to plastics clogging the streets and waterways, encouraging the breeding of mosquitos and the spread of disease.
By collaborating with TrashSmart, EWB NL is taking the obstacle of overwhelming plastic waste and turning it into a literal building block for much-needed sanitary hygiene facilities.
This type of local collaboration is key to creating infrastructure that withstands the test of time, according to Cresswell-Maynard.
“Sometimes it might be a local or national government partner who we're working with to help them better understand how infrastructure can play a role in achieving policy goals,” said Cresswell-Maynard.
Adding a local party into the conversation encourages insight into the region that may otherwise remain untapped. Insider knowledge about a particular area’s history, resources, struggles and victories can be what stands between a successful project and a crucial mistake.
“There are so many stories of failed infrastructure projects in the development space, and we don't want to add one more to that,” said Cresswell-Maynard. “It may take us a bit longer to get there, but actually the outcome is richer, more robust, more sustainable in the longer term and crucially, more resilient.”
So far, one school toilet block from plastic waste has been built to showcase the potential and attract further investment. In Ghana, 70% of women-led businesses report difficulty in securing bank loans and other formal credit. Female entrepreneurs such as Opare-Baidu often receive much smaller loan amounts than male entrepreneurs.
The women of Jakun Orang Asli
Another one of the seven EWB projects aiming to improve the lives of women and girls is happening in Malaysia, where the Jakun Orang Asli people’s water supply is so far away that girls must often spend their school hours walking miles to source it for their families.
The presence of water infrastructure could alleviate pressure from Jakun Orang Asli girls, who suffer a physical toll from walking, the mental pressure and social responsibilities of providing, and the loss of their education and future income sources.
In other words, water infrastructure could change girls’ lives and disrupt the patriarchal framework that feeds off itself and keeps girls out of schools. But crucially, it must be done properly.
“Yes, it's pumps and pipes, but there's so much more than pumps and pipes,” said Cresswell-Maynard.
Before any building took place, EWB Malaysia considered the region’s climate and topography, as well as the capabilities of locals who have a better idea of what kinds of plans are realistic for them to maintain in the future.
Ultimately, based on these considerations, EWB has proposed to build a gravity feed pipeline and rainwater harvesting system to bring water, which will provide water to the village without the time and physical effort required from Jakun Orang Asli’s girls.
About EWB UK
Engineers Without Borders UK, like the entire EWB community, operates with the understanding that the engineering community is uniquely placed to address global ecosystem destruction and unmet human rights.
EWB UK is an active branch of the EWB community, saying: “Engineers Without Borders UK is leading efforts to put global responsibility at the heart of engineering. Together with a vast network of changemakers, we are reimagining education and practice, equipping people with the skills and mindsets needed to help humanity and the planet thrive.
For more information about EWB UK, visit https://www.ewb-uk.org/
To support EWB UK, visit https://www.ewb-uk.org/support-us/
