Service Learning Trip to Malawi
This past summer a team of two Cal Poly faculty members and five Cal Poly students traveled to Malawi to evaluate the implementation of their class project on sustainable irrigation practices. Team members included Diane Long, retired Political Science faculty member and team leader, Rod Hoadley, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering faculty member, Social Sciences graduate Kaitlin Chandler, Earth Science graduate Bridget Hill, Animal Science senior Grace Wetmore, Environmental Engineering senior Blayne Morgan, and Lori Atwater, a General Engineering senior.
Cal Poly students on site in Malawi.
The idea was developed as the result of a new course series, UNIV/HNRS 391 & 492: Appropriate Technology for Impoverished Communities, which was offered for the first time last Winter and Spring. The course series brought together a multi-disciplinary group of students and faculty members who shared a desire to help people around the world. The students studied impoverished communities, world hunger, and the causes of poverty. They used this knowledge to develop technologies that would be feasible to implement in such communities.
This particular team’s focus was on Malawi, Africa. After discovering that certain villages in Malawi did not have irrigation and could not grow enough food, the group designed a prototype for a bicycle-powered water pump. The trip was a great success and demonstrates service learning at its best. The Malawi trip blog and the Mustang Daily article on the trip have more details.
Cal Poly students and faculty members are currently working on improvements to the prototype in hopes that villagers may be able to pump their own water in the near future.