Niall Nolan
Mexico City - Rainwater Harvesting Systems
Fundraising for Engineers Without Borders UK
Story
Hello folks – thanks for taking the time to visit my page.
I'm heading out to Mexico City for 6 months in August, to work on a project installing and modelling rainwater harvesting systems (RWH). These systems are being implemented in impoverished communities who are unconnected to the grid and who have no reliable access to clean drinking water.
Context
Mexico City has a huge water supply problem - it's built in a valley way above sea level, has to pump it's mains water from 130km away, and many areas of the city have developed 'informally' and so remain unconnected to the main grid. The rainwater harvesting systems allow individual households to collect the rainwater that falls on their roofs, and use this for clean drinking water in an environmentally sustainable way.
My Project
I will be volunteering with a team of engineers and sociologists, modelling the effectiveness of rainwater harvesting systems vs traditional methods of water distribution in the city. The aim is to encourage the large scale implementation of RWH systems to help more communities across Mexico City and beyond.
The Charity
The charity that is placing me with the NGO in Mexico is Engineers Without Borders-UK - who recruit skilled volunteers and place them with organisations working on community driven poverty alleviation initiatives around the world. I'm looking at this as a great opportunity to apply some of the things I learned in my degree in a really positive way.
For the placement, we are asked to do some fundraising on behalf of the charity to help fund the project and others like it. I know that a lot of charity emails are circulated around work places etc. quite frequently, but I'd really appreciate any help by way of a small donation via my Just Giving page.
I am also running a charity football game, raffle and pub quiz in an effort to reach my fundraising target so your additional support would be a massive help!
EWB-UK and my project - http://www.ewb-uk.org/programmes/placements/irri-isla-urbana-2015-0
The company I will be working with in Mexico - http://www.islaurbana.org/
Thanks, I really appreciate your support - hope to see you all before I go (where possible!)
Niall
P.S. Short YouTube clip of a film I went to see about the water issues in Mexico City - the NGO I will be working with feature quite prominently in the film! It's only in Spanish unfortunately but some of the scenes are unbelievable.
Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.
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