Our Trips.
The community of Chiwirapi is currently forced to collect water from a local stream that is contaminated with human and industrial waste from the upstream community of Bolivar. This results in a high incidence of water-borne diseases, especially in young children, and has also led to a high infant mortality rate in the community and surrounding areas. The people of the community currently have no way of purifying their drinking water other than boiling, which does nothing to remove the heavy metals contaminating their drinking water, and is resource intensive.
Trip 2: Dig wells in june!!!
The goal of this project is to design and construct, with the help of community members, a water purification system that will service the entire population of Chiwirapi. Our Engineers Without Borders chapter (EWB-UI) will be traveling to Bolivia in June 2014 to implement a well digging project that we have been designing for the last 2 years. During this assessment our 8-person team will be working with the community members to build wells and identify more solutions to best meet the needs of the entire of the community during our 5-year commitment to them.
Trip 1: Survey Needs (Summer 2012)
During our trip in summer 2013, we got to know the people of Chiwirapi as we took water samples and documented the resources available. The community of Chiwirapi is currently forced to collect water from a local stream that is contaminated with human and industrial waste from the upstream community of Bolivar. This results in a high incidence of water-borne diseases, especially in young children, and has also led to a high infant mortality rate in the community and surrounding areas. The people of the community currently have no way of purifying their drinking water other than boiling, which does nothing to remove the heavy metals contaminating their drinking water and is resource intensive.