Starting a Project
If you are interested in pursuing a project, here’s some information you should know about our process, our chapter, and our experiences.
The project work we do generally depends on chapter members willing to devote time to it. We maintain long-term commitments to the communities we serve, often to the exclusion of projects in new areas. If our chapter is unable to take on a project, we will do our best to refer you to an appropriate organization or other EWB chapter. Whether your project proceeds with our organization or another, here are some things that will help make it a success.
Projects need to have a champion. This is someone that leads the efforts and will consistently stay with the project over the long haul. If your proposed project(s) have this person, you are in a good position to make it come to life. Otherwise, without some consistent force driving the ship, the project will not progress very well especially when dealing with changing volunteers and EWB requirements.
Chapter meetings are a good place to pitch your project idea and rally support. Once a team is assembled, 99% of the project work is done outside the monthly meetings. If you have an idea for a project you think would be a good fit for our chapter, come to a chapter meeting and discuss it. This will give you a good sense for how many people are interested in helping or looking into it further.
Is there a non-governmental organization (NGO) or other organization that is in-country that we could partner with to help with the project? EWB-USA generally requires an in-country partner.
Communication is huge on these EWB projects. What are the potential modes of communication with the community? Internet, phone, through translators, only on trips, etc.
There are hundreds of other factors (many of them not at all related to engineering) which can accelerate or limit the success of a project. If you have suggestions or tips, we’d love to hear them. For further information on the overall EWB-USA process, please visit the projects section of the EWB-USA website.
