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The University of Maine chapter of Engineers Without Borders will be receiving a gift this holiday season to help a Honduras community overcome latrine flooding.
“The excess water coming in floods their latrines. That water goes to ground level,” Higgins said. “People are getting sick.”
According to the chapter’s Web site, “Flooding during the rainy season causes latrine holding tanks to overflow, exposing the residents directly to human waste. Even when the town is not flooded, some latrines leak to the point where waste can be seen oozing from the ground. Flooding also creates stagnant pools of water which allow mosquitoes to breed and transmit disease.”
The University Bookstore has decided to donate the proceeds of the annual UMaine holiday ornament sale to the student organization, which “is open to all students and community members who are interested in sustainability and working with developing communities worldwide in order to improve their quality of life,” according to the chapter’s Web site.
“This particular program helps student groups with limited funding that best achieves altruistic goals of helping others,” said Director of Auxiliary Services Richard Young.
The UMaine chapter’s members said the money from the bookstore will be used to benefit residents of the 4-year-old Dulce Vivir, a village in the Central American country of eight million, more than 100 miles northwest of the capital Tegucigalpa. Honduras is slightly larger in area than the state of Virginia.
Engineers Without Borders co-president Sean Higgins is grateful for the bookstore contribution, which Young said could net the group $2,500 to $3,000 judging by previous sales. The proceeds are ongoing each year, and money could be coming in for a long time.
“If we get $2,000 or $3,000 [from the ornaments], that would be great,” Higgins said.
Higgins estimates the project to cost between $29,000 and $30,000. The group has only raised 20 percent of its goal, with a construction date in about six months. In response to fundraising rigors, the group has developed sponsorship packets to send to Maine businesses that give benefits to potential donators in return for funding for the cause.
Higgins said the benefits in the packets are specialized for each company. A sample packet went out to 20 businesses Dec. 4.
Dulce Vivir, on the outskirts of Dulce Nombre, a town of 3,500, consists of approximately 25 homes and 100 people. The people of the village have been beneficiaries of non-governmental organizations in the past. Irish missionaries built all the homes in the village, according to Higgins. The homes were built strong, but there was one large problem: The villagers live in a wet area with a high flood plain — which Higgins says is dangerous for their health.
The chapter will use a leach field to remedy the flood situation. It was chosen as the better of two solutions to the problem by the people of Dulce Vivir. Higgins called it “the most feasible” solution.
The group has made two trips to Dulce Vivir to analyze the situation — the first in March 2008 and the second in March 2009, and will be going again in January 2010. If the acquisition of materials goes as planned, Higgins and the chapter members plan to start construction in Dulce Vivir in May after spring semester ends.
A complicating factor in the upcoming trip has been the June 28 coup d’état in Honduras, which saw Honduran soldiers oust former president Manuel Zelaya from the country at gunpoint. Roberto Micheletti, a congressional leader there, was named the successor but did not run in the Nov. 29 presidential election won by rancher Porfrio Lobo. The election has been described by most nations, including the United States, as free and fair. The U.S. State Department issued a travel alert for Honduras on Nov. 6, citing “the current uncertain political and security situation,” and recommending “that American citizens exercise caution when traveling” there.
Past winners of the bookstore award include Alternative Spring Break, Alpha Phi Omega, Gamma Sigma Sigma, Rotaract, College Against Cancer and the Central America Service Association.
The Central America Service Association has been involved in the Dulce Nombre area since 2004. It facilitated the building of a modern library in the town. According to Higgins, it was association advisor Kathleen March who got the Engineers Without Borders chapter involved in the Dulce Vivir community.
“They weren’t awe-inspired,” Higgins said. “But the response was certainly a positive one.”
