Linnea is a Civil Engineering major at the University of Southern California. She is originally from Orinda, CA, and is the granddaughter of SB North Rotary's own John Engstrom. She is currently a senior and the Director of Marketing for “Engineers Without Borders” at USC. Harrison is also a senior at USC, hails from Boston, and is majoring in Electrical Engineering. He is currently the Director of External Affairs for “Engineers Without Borders” at USC.

 

“Engineers Without Borders” was established in 2002 when Dr. Bernard Amadei from the University of Colorado-Boulder traveled to Belize and saw the citizens there struggling to obtain clean water in their area. He immediately started the program and began working on their first project building an infrastructure that would help the people of that area get clean water near their homes. Since then, the program has grown and made differences nationally and internationally. Today there are 14,000 members all over the world. Their mission: “[to build] a better world through engineering projects that empower communities to meet their basic human needs and equip leaders to solve the world’s most pressing challenges” (https://www.ewb-usa.org/mission-and-history/). The projects are individually created and carried out by chapters at Universities and in cities.

 

The EWB chapter at USC was founded in 2006 and immediately started a project in Honduras. However, because of safety concerns, they had to return home. But in 2009 they found out that 300 people had access to clean water in Honduras just by the little effort put in before the program members were sent home in 2006. There are currently 50 active members at the University with a range of different ages and majors. Their current projects are in Gambella, Kenya, and Antigua, Guatemala. There are also different teams with specific specialties for each project. There are Guatemala teams, Kenya teams, Fundraising, Marketing, Internal Affairs, and External Affairs.

 

Harrison has been a part of the Guatemala team and has been on two trips there with two different approaches in providing water to the local communities. He explains that Antigua, Guatemala is full of culture and actually burned down years ago but has rebuilt itself and made a lot of progress but unfortunately lacking with water infrastructure. The program works closely with Common Hope, another program providing education, healthcare, and shelter to the families of Antigua. The first project’s goal was to create a well/filtration system. This provided more than 850 citizens of Antigua and surrounding communities with clean and accessible water. The second project is currently being created and organized. This project will help the community irrigate more efficiently by reusing rainwater.

 

Linnea has been a part of the Gambella, Kenya team and helped them in retrieving clean water. They worked with Global Hope Network which helps communities bring out sicknesses and diseases in a holistic approach. For two years there was a windmill and well in the community that was created by UNICEF. However, the citizens were not trained on how to manage or repair the windmill and well and eventually it broke all together. The village in Kenya has 200 households with 8-10 people living in each. The people need water and Engineers Without Borders at USC helped tremendously. They temporally fixed the windmill and well and are planning on fixing it permanently on their next trip there.

 

Overall, Engineers Without Borders at USC and worldwide have been doing miraculous projects all over the world to ensure communities in third world countries can have clean water close to their homes and communities!