Engineers Without Borders - Young people in rural India learn engineering skills from students at Bath University
Last updated 7/22/2010 11:58:28 AM
Engineers Without Borders - Young people in rural India learn engineering skills from students at Bath University
Eleven students from the University of Bath are teaching basic engineering skills to young people in rural India to help them find solutions to problems in their communities.
The students will spend three months in voluntary teaching posts at six education centres across the Maharashtra region, teaching pupils who have dropped out of school.
They'll pass on skills that include engineering drawing, how to select motors and pumps, as well as how to build simple technologies such as solar water heaters and water filters. The goal of the programme is for the Indian students to learn skills that can help their communities, and improve their employment prospects.
It's part of a scheme run by the international development organisation, Engineers Without Borders UK. The charity aims to remove barriers to development through engineering and give university students the opportunity to learn about technology's role in tackling poverty.
The Bath group is being coordinated by Hayley Weston, a postgraduate student at the university who was a volunteer herself last year and taught Indian pupils how to build and maintain a biodiesel plant to provide fuel for small-scale electricity generation.
"It's a great opportunity for the students to take what they have learnt and see what it can actually achieve, and how people in need can benefit," Hayley said. " With this project you get a holistic engineering experience as well as the chance to immerse yourself in another culture."
Simon Joe Portal, a mechanical engineering student who is one of the volunteer teachers said: "I have aspirations to work in a developing country in the future and this project is a wonderful chance to get out there as an engineer for the first time. Teaching students what I am learning myself will be hugely beneficial to me and my studies and will be a great way to take my interest in engineering and in the developing world and give them both some purpose."