Team Members
Kyle Reynolds, Sai Sivakumar, Ellen Tilford, Garrett Prost, Adam Assink, Alec Distel, Allene McIlwain, Ashley Lee, Brigitte Smith, Charles Anderson, Jessica Borin, Kate Yuhas, Kevin Shen, Larissa Lu, Michael O’Connor, Paolo Romero, Rahul Gupta, Sara Palmerton, Sarah Bohen Shera Shevin
Advisor
Nathan Schell, Steven Skerlos
Project Summary
BLUElab NicarAGUA is a student organization that works with rainwater collection in rural Nicaragua. In the past year, with support from the Distinguished Award seed grant, the team has completed a needs assessment for Jicaral, Nicaragua. The goals of this project are two pronged, and include both engineering and education goals. The engineering goal is to build rainwater catchment, storage, and irrigation systems for various households throughout the community.
The education goal is to educate the residents on the use and repair of these systems, along with general water treatment and sanitation issues. The residents will be able to maintain existing systems, and implement more systems on their own in the future. The team is also developing curriculum resources for local children, focused on improving understanding of water sanitation and sustainability. Residents will be empowered with the knowledge and resources to maintain the systems and communicate to the community why the system is important. These educational efforts will help ensure the sustainable use of the rainwater system.