Global TIES is an innovative humanitarian engineering program at the Jacobs School of Engineering at the University of California, San Diego. I worked with a group of socially responsible UCSD students leading our humanitarian engineering efforts towards bringing early education to developing areas. Our mission was to sustainably bring early education to developing nations around the globe. Our pilot project takes place in Fiji on the island of Taveuni, where we teamed up with nonprofits Loloma Foundation and Fiji Kindi Project to implement a sustainable Kindergarten constructed out of recycled shipping containers.
I joined the project in Fall 2014 and worked as a lead of the prototyping sub-team where we built the model of the roof which will be used as a water collection system.
By the end of the quarter we successfully tested it and decided that this design can be scaled up and it is ready for implementation. I later came back to the project in Spring 2015 and joined Structural Design Sub-team. This time I worked on finalising the design for the composting toilet. We had to make a tutorial of how to build it to prepare for the possible implementation trip in summer.
Model of composting toilet
This project is very fun and it can become very successful when implemented. What I enjoyed the most during my work with Global Ties is that we use our engineering knowledge to help people. I believe engineers can change the world and this project can be the first step for us to become humanitarian engineers.
All images are courtesy of Global Ties UC San Diego.
Vera Smirnova 