Abstract:

At its core, the engineering profession endeavors to use an in-depth understanding of the physical world to solve problems for society, whether that is designing a new vehicle to bring humans to the far reaches of the solar system or developing an inexpensive water filter to provide safe drinking water here on earth. To prepare engineering students to take their place in the workforce and effectively carry out the responsibilities of a professional engineer, educational institutions often provide a capstone experience to their students. At the University of Colorado Colorado Springs, this capstone experience is provided in a yearlong multidisciplinary program wherein project sponsors provide real-world problems for the students to address. Students are formed into teams based on their interests and the technical challenges associated with the various problems. One category of project sponsor providing problems to the students are non-governmental organizations asking the students to address a problem for people in need in developing countries around the world. These problems tend to be less technically challenging, but in order for a solution to be a true solution for the people affected by the circumstances, a thorough understanding of the people, their culture, and physical and economic constraints is necessary, and these factors provide the significant challenge to be overcome by the student team. Also, to make the solution truly sustainable, and to have a significant impact on the affected population beyond the time of interaction with the team, it is critical to find a way to involve the local population in the process. This paper will present the results of an exciting project addressing a critical need for the population living around Lake Bunyonyi in southwest Uganda. The project was sponsored by the Global Livingston Institute, a non-governmental organization focused on East Africa. While ample water is available in Lake Bunyonyi for crop irrigation and basic household needs, the villagers who live around the lake, lacking available power sources, must retrieve the water from the lake during the dry seasons, making 14 or more trips on foot per day down to the lake and carrying the water up the steep hillside in 20 liter jugs. This severely limits the areas that can be cultivated during the dry season and puts significant strain on everyday life for the villagers. The student team was tasked with devising some means of improving this aspect of the villagers’ lives. Based on significant research conducted prior to a visit to Lake Bunyonyi in January of 2024 and leveraging the information gathered by previous student design teams, the team arrived at Lake Bunyonyi with limited time to investigate options for implementing their planned Wirts pump to help the villagers get water up the hill in a more efficient manner. Employing local laborers and acquiring all supplies locally, the team successfully demonstrated their successful design through construction and installation of the human powered pump at a pilot location on the lake. As exciting as seeing this pump in action, the measure of the true success of this project will be in the proliferation of this pump around the lake, bringing water transportation to more and more areas of the lake. Lessons learned as well as next steps are discussed, and an impact assessment will be presented, both in terms of the students and the local the villagers.

Keywords:

Engineering Education, Service Projects, community building.