Engineers Without Borders, Mavuno and NCC collaborate to improve the educational situation in Karagwe and Kyerwa in Tanzania

The level of education in the Tanzanian districts Karagwe and Kyerwa is low. Clean, safe drinking water is scarce, and most of the primary schools lack water, electricity, adequate toilets and sufficient buildings. Many children, especially girls, drop out of school.

Engineers Without Borders Sweden and the local Tanzanian organisation Mavuno collaborate to improve the educational situation in Karagwe and Kyerwa. Mavuno runs a Secondary School focusing on supporting girls. Together, Engineers Without Borders Sweden and Mavuno work to improve the basic conditions for successful school activities, such as water and sanitation, and subsequently electrification and digitalization.

We are happy to announce that we now can continue to develop Mavunos Secondary School. NCC has contributed with a Group-wide Christmas donation that will enable more classrooms, laboratories and dormitories. The educational program can thereby be extended, which means the pupils will then be eligible to apply for university studies. The donation will also allow for new water tanks that provide access to drinking water and water for cleaning, cooking and watering crops for 3,500 to 4,000 pupils and teachers in primary schools in the area.

Mavunos Secondary School

The kind of water tank that will be built

Equality from different perspectives

Engineer to Engineer (E2E) arranged an event in Uppsala that focused on equality from different perspectives. The event aimed to give an insight into how companies work with equality and to prepare the participants for the working life in Sweden. We had three presentations from equality experts. The organisation MÄN Uppsala talked about their work, followed by Anne Peters from the Equal Opportunities Group from the IT Department at Uppsala University. 

The IT consulting company Netlight talked about how they work to increase the equality in their company and society as a whole. 

The presentations were followed by an interactive case where the participants could share their ideas and experiences about equality in the workplace. 

We at the E2E team would like to thank our partners for making this event possible!

Engineer to Engineer aims to facilitate the integration of recently arrived engineers and scientists. Engineer to Engineer connects progressive companies with newly arrived engineers and scientists to improve work and social integration. Engineers and scientists can network and exchange experiences with working professionals in Sweden.

Member Meeting 2018

Come and meet your colleagues and friends!

We at Engineers Without Borders want to invite all of our members to the 2018 national member meeting! This year’s member meeting will be held in Stockholm on the 24th and 25th of November.

Date and time: November 24 12:00- November 25 12:00

Place: Hammarby allé 47, 4th floor, Stockholm  

Please register here for the meeting, and here for the dinner.
The deadline to register for the meeting is November 22 and November 17 for the dinner.

Agenda:

Saturday 24/11

12:00 - 13:00 Lunch

13:00 - 16:00 Presentations of what is going on in the organisation including Official member meeting (Agenda is found here, and changes to the statutes here) as well as a break. 

16:00 - 18:00 Discussions about the EWB vision, mission and graphical profile.

19:00 - 22:00 Dinner at Grill (to a cost of 250 kr, sign up and pay here)

Sunday 25/11

10:00 - 11:00 Common breakfast

11:00 - 12:00 Thematic group discussions (Group leaders, international project coordinators, financing group etc.). Each group will organise meetings. If you are not a part of any group but are interested in becoming active in the administration of a particular section or EWB Sweden, please e-mail info@ewb-swe.org, and we will do our best to direct you to the right people. 

Water purification system at secondary school in Tanzania

Finally, the installation of the water purification system is complete and everything is working the way it’s supposed to. That means that the pump and all filters are put in the wooden box that has been made to keep the system in place. The solar panels and the batteries are installed and all the electricity is connected to the system.

After testing the system it was time for the next round of water samples. In the beginning of the project, similar water samples were made with the water from the water tanks and they showed contamination of the water by high numbers of coliform bacteria. The new water samples were perfect and showed that no bacteria was in the water coming from the water tap after the filters, and that also meant the water was perfectly drinkable.

The next step was to have an opening ceremony at the school and celebrate that the project is finished. On this ceremony, the volunteers cut a ribbon together with the headmaster of the school before handing over the keys to the system and with that also the responsibility of the system. Clean water was handed out to teachers and students, and seeing their happiness meant all the hard work carried out both from Sweden during the previous year, and these two months in Tanzania was worth it.

To make sure that the teachers at the school would use the system properly, a book with instructions regarding everything from how to operate the system, how to fix errors and leaking as well as maintaining the filters properly, has been written and left at the school. By using these instructions we are educating a number of teachers and students that have been chosen as responsible for the purification system and they are learning very fast. That means we are hopeful that everything will work the way it is supposed to when we leave the school and go back to Sweden.

We have also finished the education and workshops with all students at the school, where we have continued to discuss the importance of clean water and good hygiene.

Wind Power for Tanzania

After 9 months of planning/working in Sweden and 2 weeks in Tanzania, the wind turbine is finally finished. There is now light in both the boys' and the girls' dormitories.

With the addition of four solar panels, we also brought power to 3 classrooms and the teachers' office. Now, the installation of computers is possible in the office and students can comfortably study even in the evening hours.

We would like to thank all of you for the support and especially, our three sponsors Sandvik, Wallenstam and Proplate.