Engineers Without Borders Can Build Safe Water and Latrine Systems with Your Support

KU Engineers Without Borders strives to provide engineering solutions to improve the quality of life for groups at the local, national, and international scale. This opportunity will help fund our international projects. We are working with the United African Orphans and Widows Foundation to improve the safety and health of the Bubogo community by providing a clean water source, and with Engineers in Action in Bolivia to provide the community of Colani with compostable latrines. 

Bubogo is a community in Kakombo parish, the Nakigo sub-county in the Eastern Uganda district of Iganga. This community is composed of 100 households with an average household size of eight people. The major sources of water used by the community currently are open sources from unprotected springs. This means their main source of water is shared with cattle, of poor quality and in unsafe locations (kidnapping and rape due to the location of the water sources in sugarcane plantations). 

Colani is a community three hours outside of La Paz, Bolivia at approximately 11,500 elevation, in the Andes mountains. Before this project, they had no safe way of using the restroom. Since the start of this project, the community has found that their family is much more willing to visit, the elders and community have less physical stress from using the bathroom and their overall health has greatly improved. The latrine system includes a bathroom, shower and handwashing station. 

This May, a group of three Engineers Without Borders students and a travel mentor will be traveling to the Bubogo community on an implementation trip to oversee the construction of a borehole. Latrines will be implemented remotely over the summer in the Colani community. With your support, we can work to ensure accessible means of water collection and storage and increase the quality of health and sanitation through sustainable engineering.