Internships

Devansh Gupta ’17

This summer, as part of the implementation team of the Princeton University Chapter of Engineers Without Borders, I worked on providing clean, accessible drinking water to the residents in the community of Muchebe, Kenya. I helped design and build a 67,500L rainwater catchment system that harvested water from the roof of Muchebe Primary School. The work involved installing gutters along the roofs, laying underground piping around the school, excavating trenches and pits, building lowered concrete foundations to place the storage tanks on, and constructing roofed water dispensing systems. We taught the residents how to maintain the system, and held comprehensive training sessions to encourage the community to incorporate better sanitation practices. This trip was an immensely valuable experience for me, and I will cherish the time I got to spend living with the community. During this project, I got a first-hand view of some of the major international development challenges that our world faces today. But more importantly, I saw how sustainable engineering projects can make a real impact on overcoming these challenges by providing basic necessities, like safe drinking water, to the millions of people who don’t have access to them. This experience reaffirmed my decision to pursue engineering at Princeton University.