West Texas A&M University engineering students help provide clean water in Kenya

CANYON, Texas (KAMR/KCIT) — Eight West Texas A&M University engineering students traveled to Kenya to provide clean water to an all-girls school. The purpose of the trip was to design and install a rainwater harvest system for the Plateau Girls’ Boarding School in Eldoret, Kenya.

“Over the course of the semester, we designed a rainwater harvesting system to go on the on a girls’ boarding school,” said WT senior civil engineering student, Tori Ruiz. “We all picked a job. We split it up and came together to create a final project. Then, we went and we got to build it for them.”

Officials said that during the project, the WT students learned an understanding of water, sanitation, and hygiene. The students also learned to apply an engineering solution to help the school have a high-quality source of water.

Ruiz said that many communities in Kenya don’t have easy access to clean water.

“That was the case with the school. They were pulling water from a river about a mile down the road,” said Ruiz.

The school uses the water in the nearby river to drink, cook, and clean. WT senior mechanical engineering student, J.T. Cavender said this project is important for the school.

“The river had three flower plants upstream that were using pesticides, different chemicals to keep their crops growing. All these chemicals and pesticides were flowing into that river. And what these girls were doing, they were drinking essentially all the chemicals,” said Cavender.

The contaminated water started to give the students at the all-girls boarding school stomach issues. The purpose of the rainwater harvest system is to collect, store, and clean the rainwater. Cavender added that they also placed remote sensors to continue to monitor the tanks.

“It uses ultrasound to read the level of the water in the tanks. So, what this is doing is it’s reporting this data to us here in the United States,” said Cavender. “It tells you how much it can have, and then it tells you where the water level is within the tank.”

The WT students that took part of the study abroad trip represented the majors in the College of Engineering.

“These were generally more experienced students. They were from all four of our mainline engineering programs, which is mechanical, electrical, environmental and civil engineering,” said Dr. Howell. “The project, if you just look at it from the outside, it might look like this is an environmental project or a civil engineering project. Once we did a little bit of teaching on how rainwater harvest systems are constructed, all of the engineering students had something to offer in terms of the design.”

On the study abroad trip, WT collaborated with the Christian Relief Fund of Amarillo and Hope Water Africa in Eldoret, Kenya.

“Our students in the College of Engineering went on this trip as part of the wider study abroad program, and because of that experience, they learned things they never would have learned before,” said Bell Helicopter Professor of Engineering Dr. Nathan Howell. “They met people and made new friendships and had their lives transformed in a way that we could never do on just the campus.”

For more information on the WT study abroad trip, click here.

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