It took two full days of traveling by plane, bus, boat and donkey through muddy terrain before UCLA’s Engineers Without Borders project team arrived in a rural Nicaraguan village in June 2010.

More than a year later, after preparing passports and itinerary, the team is planning to depart for Nicaragua again.

The December trip will mark the continuation of a four-year project to improve the quality of life for an agrarian community there.

UCLA’s chapter of Engineers Without Borders has been active since 2005. Engineers Without Borders is a international non-profit organization with chapters in several countries.

Now, the group, comprised mostly of engineering students but open to all students, has between 40 and 60 active members who work on international projects.

The group also works on local service projects independent of Engineers Without Borders.

All projects have a minimum five-year commitment, which helps communities feel a sense of involvement, said Suzanne Brown, a fourth-year civil engineering student and president of the UCLA chapter.

The communities need help providing basic human needs for their people, Brown said.

In September, a UCLA team traveled to Guatemala in September to work on rainwater catchment tanks to collect water. It was difficult for the community to gather fresh drinking water.

The team is working on testing a water tank prototype at Sunset Recreation to ensure all system issues are resolved before their next trip to Guatemala.

In Nicaragua, meanwhile, Engineers Without Borders designed three latrines that the agrarian community can use to make compost for farming. The best of the three latrines will accompany a new schoolhouse they plan on building in the country.

The group is now awaiting feedback from the community as to which latrine model works best.

In the meantime, the team will travel to Nicaragua to survey the land and begin excavation for the schoolhouse, said Oren Frieberg, a project leader and doctoral student in computer science.

There is pressure to get supplies ready and to get into the village area quickly, said Henry Phan, a project leader and first-year environmental engineering graduate student.

“You land and you hit the ground running,” Phan said.

Safety and sustainability sometimes cause the team difficulties because the quality of materials available in the United States are often not available to the rural communities, Frieberg said.

This challenge inspires innovative designs that work around such problems and get the job done, he said.

Because of the remoteness of the community in Nicaragua, the group has to bring their own medical supplies.

On the last trip, Phan managed a large medical kit – one of the heaviest items the team brought – so that he could distribute painkillers and medicine when necessary. The team also brings a water filtration system to ensure that there is safe drinking water.

Traveling provides real world experience not always possible in the school setting, Frieberg said.

Because engineering educations can be very theoretical, students often do not get much practice, Phan added.

Not only do the team members get hands-on experience with engineering, they also develop relationships with the community, Brown said.

These communities have been let down before.

Sometimes financial problems have forced organizations to drop projects before completion, but the Nicaraguan community welcomes the UCLA chapter back and trusts the team to help, Frieberg said.

“Our buildings will be there longer than others,” he said. “The Nicaraguans do not trust their own buildings as much as they trust (those built by) Engineers Without Borders, so the schoolhouse may be used as a shelter when the weather is rough.”

Every step of each project must be submitted and approved by the national division of Engineers Without Borders, and every project has a professional engineering mentor who oversees the project and ensures standards are being met. Each group also works with a nongovernmental organization.

When they are not traveling, chapter members work on translating instruction manuals for project designs so the communities can learn from them in the future. They also hold regular fundraisers.

“Engineers describes the nature of (our work), but that’s not the whole story,” Brown said.

In the village of No Lae in Northern Thailand, 50 students currently attend school in a single small room with no power.

Engineers Without Borders UCLA, a group of students who work to develop environmentally and economically sustainable engineering projects around the world, is currently working to improve schooling conditions in No Lae.

Jordan Spatz, a graduate student at Harvard and MIT, is currently heading the group’s project to construct a new schoolhouse in the village.

The project came about as the result of a collaboration between Engineers Without Borders student groups from UCLA, University of Maryland and Columbia University, Spatz said.

In 2004, these three groups, the first student chapters of Engineers Without Borders, constructed a 10-room field hospital in Northern Thailand. The king of Thailand was so pleased with the success of the project that he requested, through the Thai Royal Foundation, that this same group of volunteers build a schoolhouse in No Lae, Spatz said.

The village of No Lae lies near the Burmese border, and many of the children in need of schooling in the area are the children of Burmese refugees, Spatz said.

“The school is really over capacity,” said Steve Hunt, the club’s president. “A lot of kids don’t get to go to school.”

“In L.A., we take it for granted that there is going to be a schoolhouse,” Spatz said, “but that’s not the case around the world.”

The project, designed entirely by students, will provide three spacious new rooms for instruction, and will be completed in early January, Spatz added.

Spatz said that projects developed by the Engineers Without Borders club, including the current project in Thailand, are made possible by support and donations from numerous sponsors.

Another of the groups current projects aims to install rainwater collection systems in the village of Chocantariy in Guatemala.

The project is lead by Bart Forman, a doctorate student in the area of civil and environmental engineering.

Chocantariy lies on the continental divide, and has distinct rainy and dry seasons, each lasting about six months. During the rainy season, the collection of clean water for drinking and sanitation does not pose a problem for the people of the village. In the dry season, however, they must walk long distances to collect water from pools, which are often contaminated, Forman said. The collection systems built by the group would provide a clean, safe source of water for an additional three months during the area’s dry season, he continued.

“We hope that this will help them to build a better life for themselves and get out of the peasant farming lifestyle,” Forman said.

Karen Lee, a second-year chemical engineering student, spent eight days in Guatemala working on the project.

Lee said that she wanted to work with Engineers Without Borders in order to give back to those who are less fortunate.

“I feel like I have so many opportunities. I have so much to be thankful for,” she said. “There are people living in other countries who don’t have these opportunities at all.”

Lee said that the people in Chocantiry expressed great interest and excitement in the group’s work.

“When the people there saw what we were doing, there was a lot of encouragement,” she said.

The group’s projects allow engineering students to use the knowledge and hands-on experience they gain to provide aid to those in need, said Hunt.

“Working on these projects, you’re doing exactly what you would do as a civil engineer,” he continued.

“It’s perfect for what I want to do,” said fourth-year mechanical engineering student Julie Pasternack, the club’s external vice president, who hopes to eventually work developing irrigation systems in South America.

“People get the notion, even engineers themselves, that engineers are in it to make a lot of money,” Pasternack said. “This is a way you can use your knowledge to help others.”

“When you get involved in a project, there is a great sense of satisfaction when you see the project constructed and helping people,” said fourth-year civil and environmental engineering student Savoth Hy, the group’s publicity chair. “When I meet new people at conferences and events, and tell them about the projects that have been constructed in the past and the progress that we have made on our current projects, they are usually pleasantly surprised.”

The club’s humanitarian work is not limited to engineering majors. Students of all majors help with fund raising and grant writing, Hunt said. He added that project leaders look for people who can speak the language when traveling in foreign countries.

The club also collaborates with other student groups on campus.

For example, Engineers Without Borders has looked over technical projects for Global Business Brigades, another humanitarian group on campus, Hy said. Forman agreed that students of all backgrounds can become involved in the group’s work.

“We always need people to help with marketing, public relations, fund raising, and communications,” Forman said.

“We’re always looking for people to roll up their sleeves and dive in with the rest of us.”

Follow the Daily Bruin on twitter for breaking news alerts.