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This trip was to work towards providing a small community in San Rafael, Costa Rica with clean drinking water. For Engineers Without Borders assessment trips, the purpose is to gather enough information so that it can be brought back and a solution can be designed for the problem at hand. The community we were involved with had a defective water tank. During the trip we looked at the quality of their current tank, recorded water flow data, elevation data, and analyzed the structural integrity of the soil it was sitting on top of.

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My project involvement lasted the entirety of a year, and during the travel part of the project, this phase lasted 7 days. In total, the time commitment for this project was about 252 hours.

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Going to Costa Rica taught me the multifaceted nature of Latin culture. I returned from the trip wanting to travel and learn more. My perspective of the water problem was broadened by seeing the effects of having an insufficient water supply first hand.

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In addition to seeing the way this project related to engineering and project management, I was able to see the social and cultural aspect of it. By interacting with the individuals in the community I was able to see the direct impact the completion of this project had on them. Creating a new water system takes time, and water is a form of life or death to some people. It is the way individuals survive on a daily basis, so people sometimes do not have time to watch a large project like this unravel. This was  a crucial part of the entire trip.

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This experience contributes mainly to the teamwork learning objective. The entire trip was a collaborative effort and empowering the individuals in the group to use their strengths to complete the task at hand. We had a leader, the president of our organization at the time, and we had a collective meeting every night to talk about the accomplishments that day as well as plan out the next day. She delegated tasks to people such as hiking and collecting elevation data or surveying the people in the community. Surveying individuals required good social skills, but on top of social skills, hiking with members of the community to collect data required physical effort. The leader of our group chose individuals who felt most comfortable with the tasks at hand and this ensured success on our trip.

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There were absolutely different styles of communication in Costa Rica. Despite being Hispanic myself, I still learned a lot about the culture and the way individuals are treated there. I was able to see the similarities and differences between my culture and theirs.

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One of the main goals of this trip was to make a difference not just in a short term way but to make a long lasting impact. I believe that this experience did just that because at the end of it all we were able to solidify an agreement with the     community that we would help them. From that point forward, the community felt that we would keep our word which they did not feel before we went on that trip.    

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