On Saturday, Sept. 21, over a hundred runners gathered on Tech Green to run a 5K hosted by Engineers Without Borders – Georgia Tech (EWB-GT). As a student-driven nonprofit dedicated to implementing sustainable engineering projects worldwide, “Around the World with EWB” was held to raise money for the expansion of Hombro a Hombro, a private clinic that is crucial to the Ecuadorian community.
EWB-GT focuses on supporting local communities around the world with sustainable projects. The Ecuador Project focuses on Santo Domingo, Ecuador, a town of around 330,000 people that lacks the sufficient healthcare needed for the entire community. Hombro a Hombro is a non-governmental organization that helps manage a private clinic that is the sole source of healthcare for patients in Santo Domingo who have been failed by the public healthcare system.
The organization works to meet the health needs of the community along with providing proper education about nutrition. The clinic currently has a capacity of around 40,000 patients; however, EWB and Hombro a Hombro hope to expand the capacity of the clinic to around 70,000.
Thanmayee Kavuri, third-year BME, and project lead for the Ecuador Project, shared her concern about the current situation in Ecuador.
“They’re pretty much the critical healthcare provider in the area because the public healthcare system has failed [the people there]. So they are facing a mass influx of people, but they don’t have enough space, which creates a bottleneck of resources,” Kavuri said.
The EWB-GT Ecuador team is working to help expand the Hombro a Hombro clinic with new spaces, such as a children’s area and a kitchen, both to be utilized in improving proper nutrition and healthcare for the community. The goal is to use the kitchen to teach classes to patients about proper nutrition, while the children’s area will be utilized to make the clinic more accessible for families with children.
EWB students planned the future 80-square-meter building with Revit at a cost estimate of about $100,000 with calculations still being made on the final amount needed. The main reason behind this large cost comes from the geography of the area, along with the natural disasters that occur in Santo Domingo.
“Santo Domingo faces a lot of seismic activity. So that means we need way better materials to be able to protect against that seismic activity, which means we are using a very specialized steel frame structure. The thing is, the region doesn’t necessarily know [how to make that type of material], so we have to bring in people from across Ecuador who specialize in that sort of welding and that steel frame bolt connection. So the materials are going to cost more. All of this money is going directly towards what they need, whether it be construction materials, new block steel frames, furnishings, appliances, or directly towards the building,” Kavuri said.
Recognizing the unique conditions in Ecuador, the Ecuador Project team identified the necessary materials and labor needed for the future clinic expansion of Hombro a Hombro. As of Sept. 21, the Ecuador team is finalizing their calculations on the total cost of the expansion while also updating Hombro a Hombre in Ecuador. All proceeds from “Around the World with EWB” will be used towards the building expansion and is a step towards the project’s fundraising goal of $100K. With breakfast and a live band, spirits were high on Tech Green on Saturday, with each member hopeful about the prospective building.
Yusra Azeem, second-year BME, and networking lead for EWB-GT’s Ecuador Project, discussed the impact of the event.
“As of pre-walk-in registrations, we made $3,000. The money made from this event is going directly to the community and building the designs we have in place. It’s going to be creating a space for nutritional classes and providing more preventative healthcare so that even if people are in the hospital, they will have a better space to get better. I’m just happy that my team is having fun, that the people here are running for a good cause, and we’re making money for a good cause,” Azeem said.
Several runners also seemed to share Azeem’s sentiment on the 5K, as they answered that they chose to run in the event due to a love for running and a desire to contribute to a good cause. Many of the runners were friends of the EWB-GT members, and several other runners registered for the run from the fliers that they saw around campus throughout the past two weeks. The event concluded in an awards ceremony, where the top three times for the men’s category and the women’s category were all given medals, with the first-place runners also receiving some merchandise.
While applications for joining EWB-GT in Fall 2024 are now closed, applications to join the Ecuador Project and other EWB projects will reopen at the beginning of the Spring 2025 semester.