Is this for them or for us? A couple years ago, I was advising a group of undergraduate engineering students from Rice University on a project they were pursuing for Engineers Without Borders. They were designing a rainwater catchment and drip irrigation system for a village in Mali, West Africa. Having heard about their project and having experience in that part of the world, I offered to help and provide what guidance I could.
The plan involved a student group composed mostly of engineers developing a design using classroom principles, but only relying on locally available technology, materials, skills, and spare parts. Also, with an eye to maintenance costs and training as well as general long term sustainability of the solution they proposed, the group charge included regular communication with a contact in Mali during the design phase. A installation campaign trip of about two weeks would be staffed by several students and their faculty advisors. There with the aid of local workers, the students would help install the system they designed, deal with last minute changes due to local unanticipated conditions, and train those responsible for continuing maintenace.
The main purpose of EWB with regards to student projects like these is to provide those students with a wider perspective of the world, the environments that engineering solutions affect, and spur them to think about aspects of technology such as availability and maintainability that seem to generally be given limited coverage in standard American engineering programs. My limited experience with the organization is a good one, although I believe that longer term experiences should become part of the program as it is difficult to understand cultural aspects of technology implementation without many months of experience in a culture. The typical short student trips cannot provide this experience.
After many months of planning and research and communication, the student group at Rice began to have doubts about the true demand from the Malian villager side for the system that they were designing (see similar system). Impressively, they eventually made the decision to table the project until they could get a better understanding of what the Malians really wanted. Our western culture highly values charity, as it should, and declining to offer what we consider to be charitable aid requires a difficult stand against those broad principles. However, if our goal is progress, and not simply charity, we must be ready to honestly evaluate many criteria beyond what we can provide and what others need. While our value system may impress on us the need to give what we can, we should not confuse our charity as an investment in progress. Many insist that foreign aid is worthless because it has not led to progress in most places. But, in reality, we have invested little in progress while we have fulfilled our own need for charitable giving. We should not then give up on charity, but instead recognize that progress will only come with a more studied and monitored approach. In this we are just getting started after wandering in the dark for the past several decades.