2013 Engineers Without Borders Grant Program | Honduras Water Project – Barrio Lempira and Colonia Lempira, Honduras

Helping communities meet their basic human needs
Dec 20, 2013 8:00 AM ET

2013 Engineers Without Borders Grant Program

Tetra Tech is proud to support Engineers Without Borders USA (EWB-USA) and Engineers Without Borders Canada (EWB Canada) to help communities in developing countries meet their basic human needs through lasting, scalable projects and technologies. Tetra Tech has a long history of corporate support for both organizations, including financial sponsorship and leadership involvement.

Tetra Tech's EWB-USA Grant Program provides funding to individual projects with which U.S.-based Tetra Tech associates are involved. From a field of worthy applicants, Tetra Tech selected four 2013-2014 EWB-USA grant recipients. In this article, we focus on water projects in Barrio Lempira and Colonia Lempira, Honduras.

Supplying Clean Water to Two Communities in Honduras

Barrio Lempira and Colonia Lempira are two neighboring rural communities in Honduras. The two communities are composed of 78 families who have limited access to potable water. To meet their daily needs for water, members of the community must walk several miles a day to reach an old pump well. Most have to walk several miles back with the jugs of water in tow, while a few have carts to transport water back to their homes.

Through the EWB Orange County Professionals (EWB-OCP) Chapter and their partner Olancho Aid, Tetra Tech is supporting the communities to address their basic need for clean water. Olancho Aid, a Honduran nonprofit which focuses on educating children to help break the cycle of poverty, is assisting EWB-OCP to raise funds to build and maintain the sustainable water supply.

The project’s implementation phase will be completed in 2013, when the construction of a water tank will be finished. The design phase of a water distribution system will then commence and will include all of the existing community residences. An earlier stage of this project received a Tetra Tech grant in 2011.

EWB-OCP is actively working with EWB student chapters from California State University, Fullerton and California State University, Long Beach, ensuring that future generations of engineers have Tetra Tech experts guiding their efforts.