Service-learning Capstone Class Works on Sanitation Issues in the Caribbean Nation
01/18/2018
By Katharine Webster
Five civil and environmental engineering students traveled to Haiti over winter break, armed with plans for a septic system for a new home in the town of Les Cayes. Another half-dozen will go there over spring break to follow up. Their goal: to build a model system that could be easily adapted and replicated for other homes, using only basic tools and local materials.
The sanitation project is part of an outreach program by a large agricultural teaching orphanage, Pwoje Espwa (Project Hope) in Les Cayes. The orphanage wants to help neighboring families that send their children to its schools to solve a problem that’s endemic to Haiti, the poorest country in the Western hemisphere: lack of sanitation and consequent contamination of drinking water sources.
The task of designing a sanitation system is a service-learning capstone class in civil and environmental engineering, created by the students themselves with help from faculty.
The usual capstone has students work on a more traditional civil engineering project, such as a highway bridge, that’s already been designed professionally by a faculty member. Senior Paul Salibe signed up for the Haiti capstone instead “because it’s a real-life project instead of a theoretical one. There are complications that come with designing something that’s actually going to be used.”
The Haiti capstone is the convergence of several university programs: the service-learning capstone option, started several years ago by Senior Lecturer Edward Hajduk, who oversees the undergraduate civil and environmental engineering major, and Linda Barrington, service-learning coordinator for the Francis College of Engineering; Engineers for Change, a student club; the group Biodigester-Aided Solutions for Haiti (B.A.S.H.), which began as a DifferenceMaker team; and the Haiti Development Studies Center, founded by physics Prof. Robert Giles in Les Cayes as a base for faculty and students to do research on solving life-threatening problems facing people in Haiti and other impoverished nations.
Seniors Nicole Belanger and Kayla Dooley are the driving force behind this year’s Haiti capstone. Last year, they revitalized Engineers for Change and joined B.A.S.H., which is designing a biodigester to convert pig manure from the orphanage farm into fertilizer and methane fuel.
Belanger traveled to Haiti with Giles and other B.A.S.H. team members early last year to see if they could restart an existing biodigester at Pwoje Espwa. That’s when the orphanage asked for help designing septic systems for families living nearby. Belanger, Dooley and their friends in Engineers for Change had been looking for a service-learning capstone project – and decided this was it. A smaller group will also keep working on the biodigester, with help from alumna-turned-mentor Maureen Kelly ’15, ’16.
Belanger says going to Haiti was both humbling and empowering. “I’ve always been into volunteering, but then when I saw Haiti and met the people, I wanted to get even more involved – and I thought I could actually do something to help them,” she says.
Belanger recruited more students and began planning. The college agreed to pay for the students’ plane tickets to Haiti, and Engineers for Change held multiple fundraisers to cover the cost of supplies, local transport and their stay at the Haiti Development Studies Center. Belanger and Dooley also recruited a new faculty member who specializes in clean drinking water, Asst. Prof. Onur Apul, to help Barrington teach the course.
The 12 seniors spent the fall semester learning everything they could about septic systems, from how to conduct percolation and soil tests with hand tools – a shovel, a ruler and sieves – to how to measure elevations using a laser and level and then draw up site and technical plans.
But shortly before the first students arrived in Haiti in January, they learned that their mission had changed. The orphanage’s project manager asked students to explore alternative designs – such as composting toilets or a container-based sanitation system – better suited to the area’s high water table, which can make septic systems that won’t contaminate groundwater too expensive to build. “Plans changed every single day while we were down there,” says Dooley. Adds Belanger, “We learned that you have to be adaptable.”
Barrington and Giles had tried to prepare the students by explaining some cultural norms and conditions of life in Haiti. But Dooley was still stunned by the magnitude of Haiti’s waste management problems. “There were piles of trash on every corner, with pigs, goats, chickens and dogs rooting through them to look for food scraps,” she says.
At the same time, she was impressed by the resourcefulness of the people, who were rebuilding hurricane-damaged homes and roads using hand tools and basic materials. “It was daunting to see how much work people do day-to-day. A lot of their methods and techniques are like what we used before machinery.”
Although the students’ project has changed, they’re more motivated than ever. “We don’t feel discouraged. Now that we know what the problems are, we’re just going to work around them,” Dooley says.