5th and 8th Grade Buddies learn from Engineers Without Borders

Rod Corey and the 5th and 8th grade teams arranged for our students to participate in a unique, educational opportunity offered by Engineers Without Borders. This inspiring program provided our 5th and 8th grade buddies with an interesting, shared learning experience

Engineers Without Borders: 

Hello!

We are the Portland Maine Professionals chapter of Engineers Without Borders (EWB). Our chapter membership includes professional engineers of all types who are working at firms in the greater Portland area. We're offering presentations to middle and high school classes to celebrate how engineering (and sciences) can improve public health around the world.  

EWB's goal as an organization is to partner with communities in developing countries to help meet basic human needs for clean water, schools, roads, bridges, etc. Our chapter members volunteer their time to projects that bring safe water to rural communities, design and build strong, safe buildings such as schools in earthquake zones, and bring bridges to improve transportation for people in rural areas.  We now want to reach out to the local schools in southern Maine to show how basic STEM subjects can lead to work outside of classrooms and outside of offices.  This is completely free, as all of us are volunteers living in the Portland area.

If it fits with your curriculum, we would be happy to come to your school for a presentation to share our volunteer work.  We have already visited several area schools to share our water project in Dorgobom Ghana, and to show how safe water leads to better health, education, literacy, and work opportunities for the communities.  We also offer a presentation on how to build a school in Ethiopia, showing the different building techniques compared to the usual materials and tools used in the US.  Having personally been on multiple trips, we have firsthand stories to share, both in our successes and how projects sometimes fail, but we always make a difference and explore some great places.

If this interests you, please check out our website (www.ewbportlandmaine.org) and see our recent clip on "207"  at http://www.wcsh6.com/mb/news/local/207/bringing-engineering-projects-to-people-in-need/411048462

If you would like us to come to your school for a presentation/class, please call our school outreach coordinator Kathy Hillman Reed (207-233-8762) or email her at khillmanreed@gmail.com. We're happy to schedule time with you before the end of this school year or in the fall of 2017.

Thanks for your consideration. Looking forward to hearing from you!

Nadia Glucksberg

President, EWB PMP Chapter