Appropriate Technology

Appropriate Technology

Staff: Matthew Mcintire and Mario Méndez Jr.

"Participants will be working in construction and engineering projects.  At the current moment this site is involved in the community of El Gorrion, near Magdalena.  This community was formed in the wake of Hurricane Mitch in 1998.  There is no running water and many of the homes still have dirt floors.  Some activities include making underground cisterns, channeling rain water into the cistern, making water pumps, pouring cement floors as well as installing water filters."

Mission:

Students witnessing while quenching the most urgent needs of the poor through the application of appropriate technology and prayer.

Vision:

The thirsts of students and the poor transformed into springs of living water.

Definition:

Appropriate technology- Locally acceptable and effective but possibly nonstandard solutions to engineering problems encountered in household and community development work.

Site description:

This is a project-based site.  We currently have three ongoing project types: water cisterns, water filters, and cement floors.  We also complete small, independent projects, some of which are collaborations with the other SI Guatemala sites.

What students on two-week outreaches do:

Most two-week students come as unskilled labor.  Depending on the current project, I will teach them the skills they will need for their time here.  Most of the students this past summer mixed concrete and washed sand and gravel to be used as filter media.  When the schedule allowed it, I also taught them more in detail about the sand filters, so that they could do the household installations themselves.  Whenever we work with a local family, we set time aside to pray with the family before, during, and after the project.  Also, some students spend more time than others playing with the children.

What longer-term, engineering students could do:

After acquiring a detailed understanding of all our current projects, I would like to see students try to improve upon them.  In addition, I have multiple projects in different stages of development that could benefit greatly from fresh perspectives.  Finally, should students be entering into their senior design sequence, this would be a great opportunity for them to test and refine their ideas against the political, social, and economic challenges of working in Guatemala.

What students will learn:

The problems we run into out in the field may not coincide with the problems faced in the lab.  Students will begin to understand how to work in a developing country.  They will be challenged by the limited availability of supplies, and the local concept of time.  Students will see many examples of well-intentioned, but failed projects, so that they may learn from the mistakes of others before them.  They will gain an appreciation for what may truly be called appropriate technology.

Site history:

The current incarnation of the SI Guatemala Appropriate Technology Site began under the direction of Oscar Juarez in 2005.  The first projects were square, cinder block cisterns for families in El Gorrión.  They also installed hand pumps and rain water collection systems (gutters) to complement the cisterns.  However, in 2007 with the worldwide rise in steel prices, the cisterns became too costly for the organization to continue sponsoring.  At that point, the site began laying concrete floors for families then living over dirt.  That work has continued through this summer, 2009.

After I began working with the site in January, we initiated a new project building concrete sand filters.  We built a twelve-sided wooden mold to pour the concrete containers, and have developed a method of washing the filter media to complete the filters.  This project has been put on hold, though, as a team this summer brought with them 45 plastic filter containers ready for sand and installation.  We have installed about half of them, although this is an example of a not so appropriate technology, as they are expensive to buy and break rather easily.

In April, we re-initiated the cistern project.  Only this time, we built forms to pour cylindrical, concrete cisterns that need no rebar in the vertical structure.  We have completed one of these.

Since the end of July, most of the site’s efforts have been redirected to the construction of the El Gorrión Community Center.  We have high hopes for this project.