Imagine living in a place with no sanitation or access to clean water, and all the answers are kilometres away.
Students from Carleton’s school of business, engineering and design, and food science have teamed up to address the problem of access to clean water in Tanzania through “From Buckets to Rainbarrels,” a project that features new water harvesting technologies that aim to help locals in Tanzania’s Longido district collect water in an economically viable way.
First Steps
The project started in 2015, after students from the three faculties visited the Longido District to research the issue of water harvesting.
Community residents in multiple villages and Project Tembo, a Canadian NGO, also joined forces with the students to focus on local issues and develop solutions. The result was the creation of other student initiatives that focus on issues such as waste management, brickmaking, children’s recreational equipment, weather data collection, and a community garden.
According to fourth-year industrial design student Stacey Lin, students are now addressing more than just access to clean water.
“It used to be solely water-focused, whereas now it’s based on what is an issue in the area,” she said. “Some people are dealing with health, sanitation, food and agriculture, so, it’s expanded beyond just water.”
Zi Tian Zhang, a fourth-year food science student, said students have different roles within the main project addressing access to clean water as well.
“It’s mainly the industrial design students who have projects and products developed or developing for Tanzania,” he said. “Business students—their role is in fundraising and advertising.”
According to Zhang, the influx of student voices “adds a lot of ideas” to the ongoing project.
Challenges
Students will travel to Tanzania on Dec. 29, but with a little over a month remaining, the project is facing some unique challenges.
According to Lin, not being able to witness a firsthand account of how the atmosphere and ground levels are in Tanzania is a roadblock.
“Because we are here … we don’t get to go on site to actually see what the problems are,” she said. “We identify a lot of these problems through secondary research, and we haven’t been able to talk to the locals and confirm a lot of the stuff we researched.”
Engineering students involved in the project also have to make the prototype of the device needed for improving water content in Africa. Lin added that the team would not be able to test the prototype on Tanzanian soil, which may result in a delay.
“One thing we have to consider when making the device is what they have available on site, because it is a low-resource setting,” Lin said. “We have to make sure that the prototypes we make here can be made there.”
According to Zhang, the use of chemical materials and security also adds to the stress of entering the country, particularly because their material “looks like drugs,” which may “raise some suspicions.”
The big thing is seeing if this works—I did the research and the product is completely divergent from what it originally was. There might need to be adjustments,” he said.
What is Next?
Virginia Taylor, treasurer for Project Tembo in Tanzania, is the liaison between Carleton and the Tanzanian community, and has been making recommendations to students working on their assignments and prototype.
Lin said that Taylor’s recommendations have been a great help.
“We’ve been Skype calling her to get her opinion and first-hand experience on what it’s like in Tanzania,” Lin said. “She’s really involved with the community, so she would address our ideas with the locals before we decide to go in a certain direction.”
Zhang said his experience with the project reminds him why he is a food science student.
“Now I’m doing something that I find interesting, and challenging,” he said. “This project is one example where I found a way to apply my knowledge for a rewarding experience —helping others.”
Graphic by Paloma Callo
