The Gwele Kona village in Mali, Africa needs an orphanage, but until there is a safe water source, one cannot be built. So five seniors in Miami University department of engineering have decided to take on that challenge.
Asha Ananthu, Meaghan Geist and Emily Yeager-all engineering management majors-along with Ryan Reinke and Chris Hopkins-both mechanical engineering majors-have adopted Gwele Kona's need for safe drinking water as their senior design project.
Ananthu, the project leader, was introduced to the project last year by Osama Ettouney, department chair for the department of mechanical and manufacturing engineering, as well as the academic adviser for the project.
Needing a senior design for her capstone, Ananthu realized that the project would be an amazing opportunity and set out to find other interested students.
"It seemed like a good opportunity to use everything we've learned up until this point in our engineering classes and be able to help in real life," Geist said.
According to the team, the people of Gwele Kona currently have to walk 10 miles to find sanitary water, with the area wells drying up in the summer.
Ananthu, Geist, Yeager, Reinke and Hopkins believe that their water pump could help thousands of people in the Gwele Kona village as well as the surrounding regions.
The team said that the scope of the project is a lot larger than what any of them had thought it would be. Besides researching, designing and constructing the water pump system, they are also working on making an instructional manual that that will have to be translated first into French, then into the native language of the people in the village.
Not only are the students working with a language barrier but they have never seen the village where their water pump will be placed. They said that this is one of the biggest problems they face. They have been shown pictures and been told about Gwele Kona, but they have no personal experience with the area.
According to the team, they are currently in the research stage of the project, exploring their options and deciding what design will work best. Next semester they will be choosing their design and building the pump. Part of their plans include incorporating a merry-go-round into powering the pump, which can then be used by village children to enjoy.
"We want them to feel like it's their own," Ananthu said.
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The team will also be traveling to Gwele Kona in May after commencement to install the water system and teach the villagers how to operate and maintain the pump.
"If it doesn't work, we won't just fail the course, but fail a lot of people," Ananthu said.
There are many variables the team members must address-predicting everything that could go wrong is the toughest struggle the team faces, Hopkins explained.
Ettouney said that he is proud of the students for all their work.
"They have been wonderful and giving 100 percent of their time, skills and energy," Ettouney said. "They feel so responsible about these people of Mali that they have never met and they feel already connected with them. These five students represent some of the best role models that Miami has. They care and it shows in their quality work and excitement about the project. We are truly proud of them."
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