User:GMU-EfID/sandbox

Engineers for International Development (EfID) at George Mason University (GMU) is a student run club which is recognized student organization at GMU. The focus on the club is to provide aid to third world Countries. The aid addresses small communities concerns over water shortages, clean water access, sanitation, and basic hygiene.

2011 San Isidro, Peru Project https://sites.google.com/site/eidmason/san-isidro The population in this sector was found to lack water storage for their consumption and farming needs. One ferrocement tank was built in August 2009 but wasn’t enough to sustain all the community’s needs. Two members from EfID traveled to the community in August 2010 for an assessment of the water system. Based on their collected data, EfID designed a plan using different storage alternatives over the course of the school year. In June 2011, a team of 5 students and 2 professionals traveled back to San Isidro for an implementation trip. The implementation included a new 500 gallon polyethylene tank which was ordered from a local vendor. The implementation was finished within budget and ahead of schedule.

2012 Maijuna Peru Project https://sites.google.com/site/eidmason/maijuna The Maijuna, also known as Orejon, are an endangered and marginalized indigenous group found in the northeastern Peruvian Amazon. Today, there are only 400 Maijuna individuals left living in four villages in a large area between the Napo and Putumayo Rivers. The intact nature of Maijuna ancestral lands and the biological diversity present within them is a testament to the past and present environmental stewardship of the Maijuna and the sustainability of their traditional resource use and management strategies. unfortuanately, because Maijuna lands are rich in resources, they are at times under siege by illegal incursions from poachers and resource extractors from outside their communities. The Peruvian government has recently approved creation of a protected area of 336,000 hectares to protect the biological and cultural diversity found there. Water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) has become a big problem for the Maijuna as they have consolidated into 4 villages with many livestock. In January 2012, an assessment trip was made gathering data on the community's water, sanitation, and hygiene practices. This team of 2 professionals and 2 students was accompanied on the trip by a native Maijuna guide and a representative of the Rainforest Conservation Fund, a local NGO. Community meetings were held in each community visited. Cursory sanitation surveys were performed covering common household illness and frequency of certain illnesses, personal hygiene and household hygiene practices. In June 2012, a group of 7 students and 2 professors from EfID travelled to the Peruvian Amazon to work with the Maijuna indigenous village of Sucusari to bring clean water and hygiene education to their community.