SEED students begin final projects

SEED students at MHCC have started constructing their final projects for their sustainable engineering class.

The MHCC SEED program provides both scholarships and education in economic development to students from developing countries that they can bring back to their countries.

Glenda Alfaro, a SEED student who in early April was runner up in the Clinton Global Initiative University (CGIU) challenge for her composting project, said each student was assigned to research sustainable projects and present them to the class. The class then judged the ideas on a 1 to 10 scale on how sustainable they were in the categories of soil, water, air, people and community in general.

“The ones that had the highest number were the ones we chose,” she said.

The class decided on a compost tumbler, a composting toilet, water filtration system, a fuel-efficient stove and a rain garden. From there, the students all chose the specific projects they wanted to work on the most.

Luis Castillo, from the Dominican Republic, and Douglas Barrera, Kathleen Recino and Maribel Sal Meron, all from El Salvador, have been busy digging on the slope that approaches the pedestrian tunnels. This area is notorious for collecting puddles of water, rendering the tunnels inaccessible in past winters.

“We’re trying to catch all this water from the pathways,” Castillo said, confirming that the project’s aim is to help catch all the runoff water when it rains. The group hopes to learn about land erosion and ultimately how to redirect rain runoff.

Jesula Beauchamps, who is from Haiti, chose the composting toilet project.

“This is a project we can bring home to save air pollution and water pollution. All the projects related to us – if we could go to all of them, we would – but they had to fill all the groups,” she said, adding that the spots were filled without any hard feelings and that if she hadn’t done the composting toilet, she would have done the water filter.

“This is the final assignment,” said Cecilia Guerra of Honduras. “Because in our countries, we have no other resources, so we use these,” she said and pointed out the levels in the Arrowhead water bottle that had been transformed into a water filter tap. The layers were constructed of cotton, small gravel, charcoal, sand, river rocks [pebbles, larger gravel pieces] and cheesecloth.

One of the challenges the students faced was finding materials and staying within their budget. The groups all mentioned the Rebuilding Center in Northeast Portland being a big help.

“That place is totally amazing. Instead of dumping into the landfill, they reuse it. That is an idea I’d like to take back to my country because we live with limited resources. It’s a good economic solution,” said Ariel Anariba, who is from Honduras.

Anariba and his group were working on a compost tumbler that they had affectionately named the “eco twister.” When asked what drew him to this project, he said that it was made of materials that were easily accessible and that the cost was not high — “pretty cheap,” he said.

Mabel Severino, who is from the Dominican Republic, is in the group working on a more fuel-efficient stove. “Jeymmi (Alinan, from Guatemala) wanted to do this in her community because their stoves use a lot of wood and cause respiratory problems for women and kids,” said Severino. She explained that she followed Alinan into the project because they are friends and since she knew she wouldn’t be able to help her in Guatemala, she would help her now. Also, “I’m into the woman world. Yay, woman!” she said.