Some Fort Lewis College students and faculty spent two weeks this summer building a school in Ecuador and a water system in Nicaragua through the Village Aid Project.
On Tuesday night, students and faculty reported what they accomplished at a fundraising event at the FLC Student Union Ballroom. Fundraising from the event went toward building materials needed to complete the project and travel costs.
The Village Aid Project was started in 2005 by Don May and Laurie Williams. The initial project constructed water systems for the Lahu hill tribe villages in northern Thailand. Since, students and faculty have completed 47 projects in South America, Central America and Asia.
Students take workshops during the spring, which teach them how to build the water systems and schools. While students are learning these skills, villagers from both countries dig ditches and lay pipes for the projects.
“In Nicaragua and Ecuador, they don’t have the resources for the communities themselves to build these systems,” said Geosciences Professor Andy Gleason. “They don’t have running water.”
Gleason and Engineering Professor Andy Young are faculty members who went on the trips to Ecuador and Nicaragua. Gleason worked with the team of students who built a school in Chinihueco, a small village in Ecuador. The village had more than 150 homes and about 148 students.
Located close to the equator and at an elevation of 12,000 feet, Gleason said it rained almost every day.
He said school systems in Ecuador often pay only teachers and do not provide funding for infrastructure, creating a necessity for buildings students can learn in.
FLC sophomore Amaris Hamilton, who went on the trip to Ecuador, said students worked on building the school for about 10 to 11 days. The students normally worked from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., but some would work until 11 some nights.
Hamilton grew up in Silverton and is used to living at elevation but said working strenuous labor at 12,000 feet can take a toll on the body.
“I felt lightheaded the first couple days we were there,” she said. “You just have to make the adjustment and drink a lot of water.”
It took her two to four days to become acclimated at that altitude.
Students slept in an old building in the village where they had only sleeping bags and sleeping pads. They often ate soup for meals and sometimes ate popcorn for breakfast.
“These trips give students great perspective on what it is like around the world,” Gleason said.
Hamilton said despite filtering the water, each member of the group became sick at one point of the trip.
“It’s a unique experience that you couldn’t have any other way, really,” Hamilton said.
FLC sophomore Raja Braford-Lefebvre said the trip was a culture shock.
“I had never been out of the country before this, and typically when you go and travel out of country for your first time, it’s to a first-world country,” Braford-Lefebvre said.
For Hamilton, the experience showed her how privileged the U.S. is. She said it was strange to come back to the U.S. and start thinking about ordinary college student concerns like employment and internships.
FLC sophomore Bethany Haverly participated in the trip to Las Animas, Nicaragua, to help build a water system in the village. She first heard about the Village Aid Project through her brother who is an engineering student.
Haverly, a music major, was initially intimidated by the project because she did not have a background in engineering.
“Doing the math calculations that come with an engineering project or mixing concrete, those were really scary to me,” she said. “And as a girl, I didn’t think that I’d be very useful at a building site as far as physical capabilities.”
Her brother convinced her that background and gender didn’t matter and she decided to join the project.
The team in Nicaragua completed a water tank in just three days. The tanks cost around $20,000 to build and it provided water for 83 households.
She said the building process was the most interesting part of the experience.
She loved seeing diagrams and instructions to build water systems come to fruition and be useful to a community of people.
Learning how to build the water systems changed the way she looked at problems in her life. Because she and the rest of her team were not engineering students it forced them to challenge themselves in ways they hadn’t before.
“Since I’ve come home, if I come up against a problem that seems too big for me, I just think if we could figure out how to build that tank then I can figure out how to do this,” she said.
The trip also gave Haverly a different world outlook. It reminded her of all the resources that are taken for granted in the United States like access to funding, technology or education. Haverly said the experience made her want to help people in need. As a result, she’s thinking about adding a health major to her music major.
“I’m not an engineer by any means, but I love health care and can see the need for it,” she said.
Gleason said independence is something students gain from working with the project because they learn to do difficult work while helping people.
The students are able to learn a different language, interpersonal skills and solve problems they would not face in U.S.
“They’re not going to build a ferro-cement tank here in America but they're learning problem-solving skills that they can use later,” he said.
Both Hamilton and Braford-Lefebvre were grateful for the experience and highly recommend the project for students who want to travel.
Hamilton said she is likely to recruit more students to join the project for future trips.
tbrown@durangoherald.com
