Student engineers join forces with Kenyan communities for clean water

ASU’s Engineers Without Borders designs sustainable systems to meet critical water needs

Engineers Without Borders USA doesn’t narrow its aspirations in proclaiming its purpose and taking on daunting tasks in often challenging environments.

In places frequently torn by economic strife and societal conflict, the international organization steadfastly pursues its mission to improve living conditions and set the stage for people to pursue productive lives.

Mechanical engineering student Eden Funk (pictured in foreground), the current leader of the ASU student team helping people in Kenya develop solutions to water challenges, instructs a group of children on the process of prototyping devices designed to help fulfill the project’s mission. Photo courtesy of Engineers Without Borders, ASU Chapter

Through involvement in endeavors led by the organization, a growing number of Arizona State University students are getting hands-on education in the technological, logistical, organizational and management skills needed to take on such challenges.

Among them are 22 current members of the organization’s ASU student chapter who are helping the East African nation of Kenya provide clean water to the community in the rural village of Naki by designing, testing and implementing a water filtration system, funded in part by donation from ASU’s Change the World initiative and an ASU Global Education Office Go Global grant awarded to the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering.

Various groups of students have been involved in the project in the country of more than 50 million people over the past several semesters. Last year, the ASU team helped to restore a 20,000-gallon water tank but found the water unsanitary. They then developed a water filter using easily accessible materials like sand to clean the water.

The team’s plans include implementing solar-powered well and rainwater catchment systems over the next two years to provide filtered water to as many as 2,000 people across three communities. A future well project will bring year-round access to clean water for more than 3,000 members of one community.

Eden Funk, a Fulton Schools mechanical engineering student in her senior year and co-vice president of the Engineers Without Borders ASU student chapter, is the team lead for the endeavor. She says many of the students involved are in the civil and mechanical engineering or computer science programs, while others come from a variety of other ASU degree programs beyond engineering, including physics.

Mounia Bazzi, a Fulton Schools electrical engineering undergraduate student, says the chapter expects to see more contributions from dozens of ASU students, faculty members and industry professionals in both current and future endeavors in Kenya.

Guidance from experienced mentors

Currently about a dozen students are involved, and more are expected to join before completion of the planned projects in Kenya in about a year, Bazzi says. She foresees especially impactful progress to be made by the efforts to design solar energy systems and provide batteries to help store energy for the future.

The batteries are part of the solar energy system for of the water pump project. Additional components of the project the student plan to design and build include a bore hole and a rain catchment system.

Students are pictured working on repairs to a rainwater catchment system on a rural property in Kenya, one of many such systems installed as part of a broad water conservation effort. Photo courtesy of Engineers Without Borders ASU Chapter

Funk says the student-led team is getting valuable guidance from Jared Shoepf, a Fulton Schools associate teaching professor of engineering and director of ASU’s Engineering Projects in Community Service, the umbrella program through which the Engineers Without Borders Kenya team is working.

“He meets with us regularly to review designs, advise us in getting through project setbacks, and connect us with industry experts who expand our technical knowledge,” Funk says. “Having this steady mentorship has been essential in transforming our ideas into viable engineering solutions.”

The members of the ASU Engineers Without Borders chapter currently involved are among the more than 100 students working on similar projects in eight countries and many communities worldwide.

Since 2012, about 20 students each semester have contributed to Kenya project, helping mostly with research prototyping of technologies and related systems. Teams have traveled to Kenya eight times in groups of about six or seven students.

Projects reveal fundamental purpose of engineering

As part of the ASU project’s mission, children in Kenya are learning about the importance of conservation of water and related critical resources. Three elementary school students are pictured collecting water for quality testing. Photo courtesy of Engineers Without Borders, ASU Chapter

Engineer Jack Moody, a water resources services leader with Westwood Professional Services in Phoenix, and Jason Reynolds, a project engineer with Jett Civil Engineering based in Scottsdale, Arizona, serve as mentors for the ASU Engineers Without Borders chapter and have been guiding the students on their work for the Kenya project.

“During our recent trip to Kenya this summer, it was made apparent just how much the students actually care about the community that we are providing with water infrastructure,” Reynolds says. “A few of the students made a point to start learning how to speak Swahili and were constantly chatting with the locals. I believe they really appreciated having conversations in their native tongue and it helped to reinforce the point that these students genuinely care about these people and their communities.”

Moody points to the students’ exemplary work in helping construct a 70,000 gallon in-ground storage tank to collect water from rooftop runoff collection systems, repairing two earthen dams, and building a hydraulics laboratory at the Jaramogi Oginga Odinga University of Science and Technology in Kenya.

“I enjoy working with countries that need help with water resources and other types of basic necessities, but I also just as much enjoy mentoring and working with these ASU students,” Moody says.

Funk says she has gained a perspective shared by other students involved in the project.

“Before my first trip to Kenya, the problems I worked on in my classes felt like abstract equations and drawings on a page,” she says. “Standing in a rural community and watching those calculations materialize into a functioning system that improved clean water access for thousands of people reframed everything I thought I knew. It revealed the true purpose behind engineering, demanstrating that every formula and every design has the power to improve lives.”

Those in Kenya’s communities helped by ASU also say they appreciate the students’ work in developing infrastructure.

“The collaboration between ASU’s Engineers Without Borders chapter and local communities in Kenya has demonstrated the profound impact of student-led engineering initiatives on global development,” says Noah Okidia,” a community volunteer partner in Kenya. “As a volunteer working with the ASU team, I have witnessed firsthand how technical expertise, coupled with cultural exchange and community engagement, can generate lasting solutions. Despite our vastly different cultures, the ASU Engineers Without Borders team has always fit into our communities and carried out their planned projects.”

Funk and Bazzi say these pursuits have not only been expanding student’s engineering knowledge and problem-solving skills but also giving them valuable experience in working with people in other cultures.

ASU student Eden Funk (at right) got help from a hardware store worker in the town of Bondo, Kenya, getting materials for water filtration systems for one of the  many projects to help local communities work toward establishing sustainable water resources. In eight trips over more than a decade, dozens of ASU students have traveled to the country to assist in water resources conservation and related efforts. Photo courtesy of Engineering Without Borders ASU Chapter