A group of Calgary engineers may have found themselves down on their luck after getting laid off during Alberta’s economic setback, but not nearly as down as some people in rural Tanzania.
At least that’s what Jason Ho was thinking when he decided to use his new-found free time to give back to a community that’s deeply in need of resources to gather water. He’s assisting a community in Singida, Tanzania, by designing a windmill that pumps water from wells.
“There’s under-served regions of Tanzania, and essentially they don’t have running water or anything like that,” said Ho, project manager of the wind pump. He explained how the only way for some Tanzanians to create wells is to dig them manually by shovel up to 90 metres deep.
Ho, with a background in mechanical engineering, thought of the idea earlier in the year, and brought on four other Calgarians as part of a team that includes engineers from Australia, India and the Netherlands.
One of the Calgarians, Azan Jamal, is of Tanzanian descent himself, and his grandmother once lived in the very town for which they’re designing the wind pump.
“My grandma came to Canada to give her kids the opportunities that weren’t available in Tanzania,” said Jamal, who is a civil engineer working on the structural components of the wind pump. “Now this project allows me to give back to that same community.”
The group of engineers is completing the structural planning and will pitch the project to Nka Foundation, an African organization that focuses on artistic and human development in the continent July 14.
While the engineers themselves aren’t slated to be the ones who go to Tanzania and build the wind pump, Jamal is hoping he can join the construction team and get to see the final product of his work in his grandmother’s homeland.
