Channels ▼


Engineers Without Borders are Chaning the World


University of Colorado Professor of Civil Engineering Bernard Amadei found himself in a Mayan village of about 250 people in Belize in April, 2000. He'd been invited to advise on putting in a water-delivery system for the village, which had no running water, sanitation, or electricity. With a team of engineering students and an investment of $14,000, Amadei delivered the goods within about a month, choosing a ram pump as the most efficient, sustainable design under the local conditions. The project "demonstrated the potential of professional and student engineers working together to help a local, underdeveloped community create a sustainable solution," according to the EWB-USA site.

The experience "really changed my life," Amadei said. "It was an epiphany, a way for me to realize that engineering was not just technical solutions or providing technical solutions; it had very strong social components." Later that year he founded EWB-USA. Today, the organization has over 200 developing or established chapters, at work on over 170 projects in over 40 countries. Two years later, Amadei cofounded EWB International, a loose group of autonomous organizations with the same goals.

And here our story gets a little complicated.

At about the same time Amadei was starting EWB-USA, two engineering graduates at the University of Waterloo were sketching out the plan for EWB-Canada on the proverbial napkin. EWB Canada is not part of EWB International but has grown to some 27,000 members on 25 campuses and in five major cities. A similar organization in Quebec, Ingénieries sans Frontiéres Quebec, is not one of EWB Canada's chapters, however. ISFQ was founded in 1994, before EWB-USA or Canada, and it is a member of EWB International.

To add to the confusion, other organizations throughout the world also share this name. Fortunately, they all share more or less the same goals.

Related Reading

More Insights

Currently we allow the following HTML tags in comments:

Single tags


<br> Defines a single line break

<hr> Defines a horizontal line

Matching tags


<a> Defines an anchor

<b> Defines bold text

<big> Defines big text

<blockquote> Defines a long quotation

<caption> Defines a table caption

<cite> Defines a citation

<code> Defines computer code text

<em> Defines emphasized text

<fieldset> Defines a border around elements in a form

<h1> This is heading 1

<h2> This is heading 2

<h3> This is heading 3

<h4> This is heading 4

<h5> This is heading 5

<h6> This is heading 6

<i> Defines italic text

<p> Defines a paragraph

<pre> Defines preformatted text

<q> Defines a short quotation

<samp> Defines sample computer code text

<small> Defines small text

<span> Defines a section in a document

<s> Defines strikethrough text

<strike> Defines strikethrough text

<strong> Defines strong text

<sub> Defines subscripted text

<sup> Defines superscripted text

<u> Defines underlined text

