Engineering as diplomacy

You cannot look into the eyes of a child who is dying from a disease caused by drinking dirty water -- something that rarely, if ever, happens in the United States -- and not feel changed. You cannot stand before her parents without thinking, "I'm an engineer. There must be something I can do."

I first met that young girl -- and since then, thousands like her -- in Belize a decade ago. Her village had no running water. What it did have was walking water, water carried by little girls who should have been in school. While their parents worked at a banana plantation, they served as a personified public utility, toting jugs of water. For a visiting engineer, it was an anachronistic and surreal scene, a reality that seemed impossible in the 21st century.

Clean water -- for drinking, cooking, bathing ... for living -- for us is an afterthought. Yet, 1.2 billion people have no clean water; twice as many have no sanitation. Each day, some 29,000 children die for reasons that are preventable.

Solutions to such global issues usually come in small doses. Back in Belize, they asked me to help. As a professor of engineering and civil engineer, I quickly realized the challenge of creating a water-delivery system: installing a pump in the middle of the jungle with no electricity. Not easy.

A year later, I returned with 10 engineering students from the University of Colorado. We devised a rudimentary pumping system, bringing water to the people of San Pablo. Today, the village's young girls go to school and are healthier.

That trip was a transforming experience, not just for the villagers, but also for me. Intuitively, we engineers like things big -- expansive bridges, colossal dams, massive tunnels. My experience taught me that small-scale engineering can have the most impact on people's lives.

When I returned to Boulder, I began building something else: Engineers Without Borders -- USA. The organization was formed out of the conviction that engineers have a leadership role to play in addressing some of the world's most serious problems: contaminated water, poor sanitation systems, expensive or harmful energy sources.

In a world focused on bigger and newer, there is growing recognition that small-scale engineering can play a major role in helping end the cycle of poverty that persists among almost half the world's population. Studies by the World Bank and United Nations suggest the most basic technology is critical to bringing more than 3 billion people out of poverty.

Today EWB-USA counts more than 11,000 student and professional engineers as members and works in 43 countries on 300 projects involving water, sanitation, energy and shelter. Whether it's combining sustainable technologies with advanced construction techniques to bring affordable housing to pockets of the world, drilling drinking water wells in Kenya, constructing fog collectors in the Himalayas to harvest fresh water or installing solar panels to provide energy for a remote hospital in Rwanda, we are healing communities throughout the globe, giving people dignity and hope for better lives.

There are other byproducts. We recently launched a project in a Palestinian community designed to treat and recycle wastewater. Contributing is a skilled group of Israeli engineering students. Call it engineering-as-diplomacy: Despite their historic tensions, these young people are learning to trust, respect and even love one another.

Those are the kinds of eyes I don't mind looking into.