Meet this year’s Engineers Without Borders team!
The EWB-USA was established to partner with disadvantaged communities to improve their quality of life through the implementation of environmentally conscious, equitable, and economically sustainable engineering projects, while developing internationally responsible engineers and engineering students.
Student teams learn how to ideate and engineer with developing communities. This team also has the opportunity to travel internationally to implement their designs, like the May 2025 trip to Santa Barbara, Bolivia. See Past Years to see their implementation of rock gabions and road work.
During the implementation trip in May 2025, the travel team further investigated any future projects that could be implemented as the road work enters its monitoring and analysis phase. By talking with the vice president of the community and the headmaster of the local school, it was determined that the next potential project should be a roof revitalization project.
Team Results
Throughout the 2025-2026 year, defining the scope of the school roof project has involved the planning, preparation, and execution of activities necessary to rebuild or repair the roof in response to community needs. Initially, the project team has been coordinating with local stakeholders in Santa Barbara to confirm current conditions, including the status of road access and any constraints that may affect transportation of materials and labor.
The assessment of the school roof will be conducted by members of the community who have previously worked with the team, as well as a hired contractor who lives nearby. The tentative date for the assessment is not yet scheduled, but it should be near the end of April or the beginning of May 2026. Further, the team has compiled an extensive list of inspection materials that will be used during the assessment. Once they receive the results of the remote inspection for the school’s roof, they plan to meet with a new Professional Engineer contact to discuss the course of action for alternative analysis ideation.
Past Years
The 2024-2025 MTU Bolivia Team had an amazing previous year. They went above and beyond to represent BWE!
The Bolivia Team traveled in April and completed a 70-meter road erosion/washout mitigation project in the village of Santa Barbara. It included gabion walls, cobble-lined ditches, and road grading. They also got to survey the village’s school, which is in need of roof repairs, amongst other conditions.
