Help NJIT Students Bring Clean Water to Community in Ecuador

The New Jersey Institute of Technology Engineers Without Borders is a student run chapter dedicated to helping communities obtain essential needs through engineering solutions. Our current, and largest project yet, is the Maca Grande Ecuador Project.

The Maca Grande community located in the mountains of Ecuador faces difficulty acquiring a steady source of water. Residents travel miles everyday to nearby springs to collect dirty water for use in their village. The two springs that currently supply the community of 40 families are not sufficient as it has become necessary for members to decide who has access to water on specific days. Obtaining water is time consuming and the lack of water treatment poses a health threat.

The NJIT EWB chapter has completed two of its three phases designed to help distribute water to the community and is currently working on the completion of Phase III.

Phase I: In February 2021, the implementation of Spring Cap on the water springs in Maca Grande was completed, preventing contamination of the spring.

Phase II: The Storage Tank Design was implemented in Summer 2023, connecting the springs to a storage tank closer to the community.

Phase III: A Water Distribution system is being designed from our captured springs leading towards 26 residential houses in the Maca Grande community. The NJIT Ecuador Project team has been working on the implementation plans for this project since 2024 and have not been able to raise the sufficient funds to complete the implementation. Our cost estimate is $30,000 for the pipe network materials and implementation. Our current cost estimate for materials alone is about $25,000 and most of our labor costs are cut because the members of the Maca Grande community will be working on the implementation themselves, providing labor free of charge.

WE NEED YOUR HELP!

Please share our story. We need all the help we can get to provide aide to Maca Grande community!

Please Note: This fundraising goal does not include the cost of travel for our students to take part in the implementation process. If we reach this goal, we plan to create a new goal to cover traveling costs.