21 July 2001 - National Post
Heather Sokoloff
Canadian engineers are following Nobel Prize-winning Doctors Without Borders by forming their own group that uses everything from computer networks to pedal power to solve problems in poor countries.
Engineers Without Borders (EWB) will be rolling out chapters at 13 universities across the country this fall.
The group was started by two 24-year old University of Waterloo engineers who financed the first projects with their own money.
"I had a job working for a company that made printers, and I thought to myself, all I'm doing is making paper go faster," said co-founder George Roter, now completing a masters in biomedical engineering.
"There's got to be a better way for me to apply my skills, my energy, my knowledge, toward helping people. And I figured there must be other people that have a similar feeling and want to use their skills in a similar way."
Since January, the organization has attracted about 1,000 members, received inquiries about setting up chapters at a handful of American universities and received $30,000 in cash donations from corporations.
At McGill University in Montreal, for example, more than 100 members signed up within a month. The founders hope to have the same impact as internationally renowned Doctor's Without Borders. According to Mr. Roter and co-founder Parker Mitchell, a mechanical engineer, technology is key to reducing poverty in the developing world.
"Electricity, sanitation technology really has a role in helping our quality of life in countries like Canada and the United States. It can have a similar role in the developing world, as long as we can design appropriate technologies, applying them to basic human life factors, and helping local engineers."
Six engineering students have completed development projects abroad, and EWB is establishing a network of many more who are designing technologies in Canada cheap enough to be suitable for developing countries.
A light bulb powered by a pedal generator, for example, was designed by an engineering professor at University of Calgary to replace dangerous light sources such as burning dung or oil-soaked twigs. Dr. Dave Irvine-Halliday and three EWB interns are installing 200 of the $60 lighting units in six villages in India and Nepal this summer.
Twenty minutes of pedalling powers one light bulb for four hours.
"It's literally changed their lives. Since people work during the day, they can learn in classrooms at night," said Mr. Mitchell.
In another project, a 19-year-old Waterloo civil engineering student spent four months in India designing a Web site for Pro Poor, an organization that links 10,000 Indian non-profit aid groups.
A 19-year-old McGill mechanical engineering student will travel to the Philippines this fall to set up a computer centre that can be accessed online by classrooms around the country.
The students are also designing a water purification system that uses the sun's rays to heat water and kill bacteria, significantly less expensive than chlorine filtration systems used in industrialized countries.
The engineers have attracted the attention of Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, director of the UN's Human Development Report, which this year was titled "Making New Technology Work for Human Development." She agreed to sit on the EWB board, the first time the high-ranking UN official has linked herself with a development group.
Mr. Roter will head up the group for the year while Mr. Mitchell goes to Cambridge University in England for a masters' program in development studies, where he plans to start the first British EWB chapter.