Carrera is a town in Ecuador. For the past year, EWB-OSU has been preparing for a school building structure project in the highlands of northern Ecuador. This community is in desperate need of additional classrooms on their school campus. Currently, multiple grades simultaneously use classrooms, making it very difficult to teach to the specific levels of different students.
Over the summer of 2022, A few of EWB’s finest members traveled to Carrera, Ecuador for assessment of the site. The trip gave the club a very necessary opportunity to build relationships with and understand the needs of all stakeholders (School Administration, teachers, families, local leaders, community members, and local NGO alike). It also provided space to conduct technical analysis (like concrete coring and soil penetration testing) of existing structures and potential construction sites . The entire experience gave the team valuable insight into initiating sustainable community development solutions and interfacing across cultures to achieve a common goal to satisfy technical and social needs.
The team had a blast and looks forward to continuing work with the community. This trip has proven to be quite a learning experience and will be used to help plan and guide future trips to the community!
Engineers Without Borders-USA 